h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Last weekend my nine year old son and his friend created a 'crime scene'. I let them have some red food colouring for the blood (they had changed into white T-shirts that didn't matter) and afterwards they used other food colourings to paint designs on the T-shirts, which now apparently look 'really cool'.

Which is great, but this is food colouring, not fabric dye. And I have no idea how to fix it (Osh's back was multi-coloured after he wore his the next day). Google has not so far been a great deal of help - a saturated salt solution was one suggestion, another was vinegar, and another site said neither was any use for fixing any sort of dye. Also, internet instructions do seem to start with 'Before you begin' type instructions, which are a bit late under the circumstances - I had no idea on Friday that I should have been soaking two T-shirts in some solution or other in preparation for Osh's activities on Saturday.

Any ideas? I did wonder about urine - perhaps I should just leave the T-shirts near the toilet pedestal for a couple of days

Mol

I was going to suggest urine, but no idea if it will work. Basically, if this had happened to your best skirt you could be sure the colours would never come out, but as these are t-shirts which it is ok to dye then I am certain they will be pristine white again when they come out of the wash.

I wonder if you've tried anything with these shirts yet Mol? I think that whatever you wet them with, the colours will run into each other.

I vaguely remember a sort of spray fixative that you can apply to fabric paint, and then iron the design to preserve it. No idea what it was called or where to find it. ( I did a quick google search but didn't find the product I was looking for)

I'd suggest simply ironing these shirts between kitchen roll paper to try and fix the colour with heat.

I saw a cheap pair of good quality white jeans which I thought of dying in some way, but I couldn't imagine the result being socially acceptable in the same way that tops are. A t shirt can have all sorts of random nonsense and still not make you look like a twit, but trousers are a different matter*. What could I have done?


*A bit like earrings compared to other piercings. No-one thinks twice about an earring, but put it anywhere else on your face and eyebrows are raised. Unless it's actually though your eyebrow, in which case it's weighed down slightly..

I had a lovely pair of Levi 501s which got very very nearly white from use and washing. washed them with red stuff and they went girly pink

so I painted grass round the bottoms and did flowers and leaves up the legs to nearly the bum, then a few butterflies on the rest.

Still got them (I used fabric paint which is fixed by ironing) but they don't fit

They were my fav rock festival jeans for ages and ages

Oooh, they sound great, Sho!

my plan is to fit back into them by the end of this year...

those jeans sound so cool... wonder if I could get away with wearing them... probably not, People have failed to recognize me, on the one and only occasion when I put on a pair of blue jeans, rather than black... I used to tie die shirts, with bleach.... which kinda worked well as you didn't need to fix it afterwards...

>>I painted grass round the bottoms and did flowers and leaves up the legs to nearly the bum, then a few butterflies on the rest.

Good idea, but I'm not quite that much in touch with my feminine side. I was more thinking of flinging colour at them to make a something Pollack-esque, as I've done before with tops. But trousers are a conservative area for blokes; which is why you see men in such dreary colours like grey and dark brown.

the Pollack thing sounds fab
or dip string in paint, lay it on one leg and then press the other leg on it, Warhol-stylee

As long as you wear them with a plain t-shirt, I don't think it's that much of a risk.

Haven't dared to get them wet yet precisely because I'm certain it will ruin them.

After I'd posted it occurred to me that if I got some T-shirt transfers, and ironed them onto the T-shirts front and back, inside and out, it might act as a sort of varnish and seal in the colour Obvs we would lose some of the design when washing them (because the colours aren't in a neat rectangle) but it might work. Perhaps.

Sho, those jeans sound amazing. I sprayed gold butterflies on some jeans once, I'd forgotten that. Might do it again.

Mol