Community Service Project: Tie-Dying T-Shirts

Besides learning to read, write, and perform calculations, our students learn to care for others through our school-wide community service projects. 

This year we returned to a project that is close to our hearts: tie-dying shirts that will be made into hospital-style gowns for hospitalized children. Parsley first began tie-dying t-shirts back in June 2011 in honor of Parsley student, Zack Mayo, who spent many months in hospitals. Another former Parsley student, Jordan Pipkin, a good friend to Zack, wanted to do something to help so she came up with the idea of creating fun and comfortable hospital-style gowns for children. With help from her mom, her dream became a reality and e-Z Tees was born. Thus began Parsley's history of tie-dying t-shirts. This is our third year doing this project.

All of the t-shirts we tie-dyed were donated by our students. As each of the Kindergarten through 5th grade classes came to art over the course of a week at the end of May, Mrs. Sload began by explaining why we were doing the project. She then demonstrated how to 'tie' the shirt using one of many techniques that included twisting, folding, and scrunching the t-shirt and then securing it tightly with lots of rubber bands. Older students quickly caught on and some even got creative and came up with their own way of tying the shirt. For younger students, learning how to secure the fabric with rubber bands was a new skill. Thankfully, we had Mrs. Wilcox's help all week! We were also fortunate to have the help of some classroom teachers and/or assistants as well as parent volunteers.

After the shirts were prepared for dying, Mrs. Sload modeled the proper 'stance' for learning over the bucket and dipping the shirt first in one bucket of dye, and then in a second, complimentary color. After wringing out excess liquid from the dyed shirt, they were placed in bags and then they 'baked' in the sun for a couple days to help the dye set.

The shirts were then hung out in the sun to dry. The shirts were washed by staff members volunteering to take them home. All together, we tie-dyed over 600 shirts this year!

Our t-shirts will be transformed into hospital garments by e-Z Tee volunteers who will cut open the back of each shirt and sew on ties. The finished shirts will be donated to hospitals for children to wear during their stay. 

Our students also made cards that will accompany the tie-dyed hospital gowns letting the children and their families know that we care about them.

There are many more pictures of our students working on this project on Parsley's Facebook page.