Some Questions!

[Bizgirl]

First, this is a great forum!  I've learned alot by reading the posts on here.

I'm doing a festival in a few weeks with a DIY Tie Dye booth.  It's a little different than selling pre-made shirts and I haven't run across anyone yet who has ever done this.  I suppose it's similar to doing a large group.

I'm wondering about how much dye to make up ahead of time.  I've read so much that I don't know which way to go with this.  I plan on having 8 stations, each one with 3 bottles of dye.  They would need to be refilled/replaced about  every 48 shirts or so.  Can I make up each of the three colors in a gallon jug to use as a refill and how long can they stay before they aren't good?  Should I also make up urea water ahead of time and use that with my dye?  I admit..too much information and now I've confused myself.  I thought I had this down.

Second, what price would you put on the shirts?  This is a fairly large festival that runs 10 days.  My BF thinks I should charge $15 a shirt, but I'm leaning towards the $12 for kids and $15 for adults.  Any input on the prices? 
Thanks in advance for any responses and sorry this post is so long!  I look forward to hearing your input.

[ktaltre]

I'm assuming that you are thinking of working with procion mx dyes.
You can make up a quantity of mx dye beforehand, but it cannot have the soda ash in it and the dye mix should be kept cold.
How are you going to deal with the soda ash issue; will your shirts be soda ash soaked ahead of time?
You could mix up a concentrated dye mix for each color and then add soda ash water to the dye mix as you have customers. The dye/soda ash mix would probably be good for a couple of hours. You could put the urea in the dye water, but I don't think you really need the urea in this application.
Are the customers going to "tie" the shirt? Is the shirt going to be wet or dry? If the shirt has soda ash on it, wet or dry, the soda ash is harsh on the skin.
Are you going to have gloves for your customers or are their hands going get dyed?
As to price, probably 12 for kids and 15 for adults is adequate; it depends on what you paid for the shirts. You also have to factor in the cost of the fair, dye, auxiliaries, travel, etc.
k.taltre

[deb]

For the soda ash you might try have a large bottle of concentrated soda ash solution and another bucket of water so you can make a squeeze bottle of fresh soda ash solution to squeeze over the individual shirts; I've found that in situations where there are so many shirts that you can't tell them apart once they're ll soaking in one or two large tubs, this can help keep everything segregated. Tried labeling tags with Sharpie, but if the tying hides the labels, that's a big problem.

Would also suggest a dyeing surface that's absorbent so once dye is applied, any loose dye that went thru or around the garment won't stick to any undyed or lighter areas on the garments as they're being dyed. It's not environmentally friendly, but lots and lots of paper towels can help. For parties I have a batch of about 20 towels that I put in a large garbage bag at the end of the event and take home to launder separately, but you'd possibly be thru that many well before the halfway point!

If you are providing the shirts, I don't think that $12 for kids' shirts and $15 for adults is out of line. Depending on the price point of other items at the event, though, you may want to adjust accordingly. I did a school fair once where NOTHING over $10 sold, meaning I sold a few pairs of baby socks and a couple of T-shirts to families who hadn't read that the temp would be 80F and had dressed in long sleeves -and that was IT.

Oh, I'm finding that having some sample is helpful to get people "inspired." I bought a 6-pack of cotton men's handkerchiefs at Target and have been dyeing them up in specific patterns like hearts, mandalas, spirals, and random scrunchies so when people look at their tees and blank out/glaze over, they have a sort of "starting point" I can direct them to. It's neat to fold the already-dyed hankie and show them the rubber-band line so they can see how it gets from Point A to Point B. I also use different color combos so they can see what looks good and what might not work so well.

[Bizgirl]

Thank you K and Deb for your input!

This is such a huge festival that it's going to have to be trial and error.  I am getting great ideas from everyone and will have to try them out to see what works the best.  I was hoping to do a smaller event before this but nothing comes up around here early enough.

My biggest concern in the mixing of the dyes.  I hear various takes on how soon the dyes can be made up ahead of time.  Dharma suggests making them up a day ahead for a large event, yet I've read elsewhere that you shouldn't make them up too far in advance.  Because I will need to be constantly refilling the smaller bottles I want to be able to have the dyes ready.  Has anyone found mixing up the dyes a day ahead of time to not work well?  And, these are Procion dyes I'm using.

I plan on having my help do all the soaking, folding, etc and the customers will dye the shirt.  Plenty of aprons and gloves for all!

Deb, I do like your idea of samples.  I was only going to show some of the shirts we've done, but I like the thought of showing what color combinations will look like on a simpler, smaller scale like a handkerchief.  Ultimately, the shirt will only come out as good as the color is applied so I want to make sure they can see how to do it correctly.





 

[Releaf]

Wow!  Good luck with this event -- it sounds daunting.  As long as you're not putting the soda ash in the dyes, they'll keep for the duration of the event if you can keep them chilled.  Even if you don't, they'll probably be fine.  The hotter it is, the faster they go bad, but some colors keep longer than others.  Some, like Dharma's Turquoise, Jade, Bright Green and Kelly Green, will shift towards blue pretty quickly.  After just a few days, Jade and Turquoise will wash out looking pretty much the same, though they're quite different when they're fresh.
You might want to put up a color wheel (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) and tell people that if colors are next to each other on the wheel, they can go next to each other on the shirt, but if they're opposite each other on the wheel, they'll make brown if they blend together.  We do this when we do workshops with school kids.  Some will listen and some won't, but at least you've tried.  Kids always love their shirts anyway.
Please report back and let us know how this turns out.

[steve]

I recommend having the dyes premixed without soda ash. I make a concentrated solution of soda ash and add a couple tsps (depends on concentration) in the bottle of mixed dye right before use and give them a quick shake. I activate more bottles as needed.

Activated dye makes this much more manageable than the soda soak mess.

[steve585]

Any feedback on how this event ran?

How did you deal with the setting time and the rinse/washing?  I was think of a similar event that is only a one day event and I would mark a number on the tag with a sharpie, then after letting the dye react for 48 hours I could rinse/wash and ship the shirts.