Easy Fringed Tie Dye Beach Blanket Tutorial

See how you can make this fringed tie dye beach blanket! It's easy using Tulip's One Step Tie Dye!

Disclaimer: I received free product in exchange for writing this post. All opinions are my own.

My daughter is getting ready to spend a week at the beach with a friend. Rough life, right?? She's not going to waste a minute missing me while she's on her beach trip, but I still wanted to make her something to take with her. Of course, we were also finishing up the last few weeks of her 8^th grade year. All you mamas out there know what madness the last month of a school year is, so I needed this to be a quick and easy project.

This tie dye beach blanket was the perfect answer! I don't think there's anything more "summer" than tie dye, especially when hanging out at the beach! However, if you don't fancy taking on this DIY project, you can always design custom blankets online instead. Customized blankets, pillowcases, or even comforter sets could be a great way to spruce up your home, especially if you have kids in the house. It could work as a good addition to your kids' room, giving them a feel of personalization with their very own personalized bedding set. Moreover, this custom bedding set could act as a good gift for them, as well.

The sewing is minimal (even optional) and Tulip One Step Tie Dye simplified the tie dye process and kept the mess at a minimum. It's so easy to use, and so many possibilities! You can find techniques and project ideas here.

The finished blanket is a 60" square of interlock knit fabric, with fluffy cotton fringe at the top and bottom. Both the blanket and the fringe got the tie dye treatment. I thought that was a fun effect for the fringe!

If this fringe looks familiar, it's the same fringe I used on my DIY Boho bleach denim pillow. I love this fringe so much, I just can't get enough of it!

You can make your blanket any size you like, though 60" is as wide as you'll be able to get from standard knit yardage. If you want a larger blanket than that and are okay using a thinner fabric, you could use a jersey knit bed sheet instead.

I'm so in love with the fluffy fringe lately! It was tempting to put it around the whole blanket but fringe is expensive, y'all, so I kept it to just the top and bottom.

You'll notice there's no beach in these photos. In the absence of a sandy beach, I headed down to a local park for photos. Turns out it's also a nice park blanket, creating a soft and clean place to sit down while you soak in some outside time.

It's always a little tricky sewing for teens, trying to anticipate their fickle likes and dislikes. It's hard to go wrong with tie-dye, though! When I showed her the finished blanket, she gave it an enthusiastic two thumbs up. I'll take that as a success! Tie dye beach blanket for the win!

Materials

Large square interlock cotton knit. Mine was 60" square, which was a little less than 1 2/3 yard of fabric.

White or off-white cotton fringe trim, twice the width of your fabric. I needed 120" for my 60" square, but I bought a little more to allow for shrinkage

Tulip One Step Tie Dye kit of your choice. (I used the Tulip One Step Tie Dye Party Kit and had plenty left over to use on other projects.)

Make the tie-dye beach blanket

First, prewash your fabric and fringe trim.

Knit fabric won't fray so there's no need to hem. Yay!!!

To create the box design I accordion folded the large fabric square into a long rectangle, then rotated the long rectangle 90 degrees accordion folded that rectangle into a square.

I used rubber bands (provided in the kit) to hold it all together.

Then, I used blue and violet dye on just the edges to create kind of a box design. It was a thick bundle so I made sure to use plenty of dye and stuck the tip of the bottle in between all the folds. I also bundled up the fringe and put some dye on that as well. The cotton fringe was pretty thirsty and soaked up a lot of the dye. I didn't cover all of the fringe in dye, which created a cool effect.

The tie dye kit comes with a plastic drop cloth to protect your work surface as well as a stack of plastic gloves to protect your hands.

The bottles are already filled with powdered dye. All you have to do is add water and shake it to dissolve, and you're ready to go! How easy is that?

Just make sure you use the gloves! I got so carried away with the tie dye that I forgot to put on the gloves, and my hand looked like it was dip dyed in blueberry juice. Ha! I will always remember to use the gloves.

The blanket and the fringe is a lot of material to cover. To get good coverage on this much material, you'll need to use 3-4 bottles of the dye. There are plenty of colors to choose from in the kit! (My daughter insisted that she wanted just the two colors, so I used extra bottles from a second kit.)

After the dye was on the bundles, I followed instructions to wrap them in plastic while the dye set.

It only takes 6-8 hours for the dye to set, but life is busy and it was the next day before I could unwrap them. As soon as I unfolded that blanket, I knew my daughter would love it! Look at how pretty that fringe is!

After a good rinse and turn through the washer and dryer, the dye was all set. All I needed to do now was stitch the fringe trim to the top and bottom of the blanket and I was done!! If you don't want to sew the trim, you can use fabric glue instead to make it a no-sew project.

My daughter loves her new blanket! I'm hoping it gets lots of use when she's at the beach next week!!

Go to TieDyeYourSummer.com for even more tie dye inspiration!

For more teen sewing inspiration, check out the crushed velvet bodysuit I made for my daughter!

And if you sew for teens, here are my best tips for sewing clothes that teens will love.