A Tie-Dye Adventure!

We decided to do tie-dye!

Now, I haven’t actually done this since I was in the 6th or 7th grade. And even then, it was a totally different technique. We did the whole “tie it from the middle and keep dipping progressively darker colors” method at that time. It was extremely time consuming and produced quite a bit of muddy colorings.

Lately, I’ve been watching videos on I Love to Create’s Facebook page (www.ilovetocreate.com) and they have really just been all about different ways to get different designs with the Tulip Tie-Dye kits. Some of the things they have been doing seem pretty elaborate to me, so I just wanted to start off with something easy. I’ve also seen a post floating around out there where someone made a patriotic tank top with red and blue dyes. Since my birthday is on July 4th, I was extremely eager to give that one a whirl.

First stop, Wal-mart. I was on a budget for this trip, which meant buying the big rainbow tie-dye pack for almost $20 was out of the question. They had one kit for $9 that had the colors Turquoise, Yellow, and Fuchsia. The kit also included two sets of gloves and quite a few rubber bands. Now, depending on what kind of designs you’re going for, and how many garments you plan on dying, you might want to pick up an extra bag of rubber bands, just in case. I ended up running out and had to use Ariel’s tiny hair rubber bands, which was extremely difficult and frustrating.

While at the craft area, I noticed they sold a lot of plain garments. Aprons, bandanas, etc. I ended up grabbing 2 white bandanas while I was there, one plain white, one with a paisley design. From there, we set off in search of white shirts and whatever else we felt we would want to dye. Ariel found herself a white tank top, and a white pair of shorts. At home she remembered she had a white skort, so we dyed that as well. I struggled finding something in my size, but eventually found myself a white tank top. I also had something white at home, a t-shirt from H&M that I’m sure someone paid a lot of money for, but I was lucky to get it at thrift (ain’t nobody got time to be spending 20 on a white t-shirt).

Once we got home, I took all of our white clothing and threw it into the wash for a hot cycle. Newly bought clothing can sometimes have some sort of chemical in it to keep wrinkles out, and this can hinder the dying process. At least that’s what I’ve been told. Once out of the wash, I gave everything a good shake out, filled one half of my sink with water, threw the clothes into the sink, then prepped everything.

First off, I am a terrible baker, which means that I don’t have a cooling rack, which probably would have made this so much easier. But, our end tables are just plastic shelving that comes apart, and it’s kind of like a grate. I pulled the bottom off of one table, took it outside, and gave it a really good cleaning. Once that was done, I filled up the three color bottles with warm water and gave them a good shake for a few minutes. I grabbed a rag to set them on so they wouldn’t get color all over my counter while we are switching bottles and taking turns. Once that was done, I pulled the clothes out and started to scrunch and twist and band them up. I did a couple of the swirl designs, I did some line designs. I even attempted a double swirl. By this time, Ariel was growing super impatient and just wanted to get to dyeing!

I took the makeshift grate and put it over both sides of the kitchen sink. In retrospect, I probably should have done this outside, or put some water in the sink, because it did end up staining just a little bit. It’s not really noticeable unless you’re looking for it, but still annoying. The babe and me got our gloves on and got to dyeing! She did so well her first time and didn’t really get bored like she usually does. Her tank top and shorts she dyed herself. I helped her with her skort a little bit, but definitely by her instruction. While she was doing hers, I was doing mine. It was pretty cool how much you could get done with just these three bottles of dye. We did 7 articles of clothing and still had enough for maybe 3 more! It definitely wasn’t well received that she was going to have to wait until the next morning to see the fruits of her labor, but she quickly got over it and went off to her room to play while I put each piece into it's own bag to marinate.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering about the patriotic shirt I mentioned earlier. Yes, I did end up doing it. While I was picking up the tie-dye kits, which inconveniently did not have the colors I needed, I grabbed a couple bags of the permanent dyes right above them. Me being so naïve, I thought that would work just fine and it would be simple, blah blah blah. The process of using these permanent dyes is extremely different than using the tie-dyes. Somehow, I have no freaking idea how, I made this work out pretty alright. I scrunched the tank top and the plain white bandana in diagonal straight lines, starting in the middle. I tried to space the bands out as evenly as possible. I emptied out the dye bottles and gave them a really good rinse and dried them the best I could. These bottles come with a set amount of dye in them for the tie-dyeing process. You can see the amount of powder at the bottom is maybe a centimeter? Something like that. For this dye, I ended up putting in about 3 or 4 times the amount of dye. My mistake? I. Forgot. The. Salt. My colors could have been so much more vibrant! I remembered about an hour into the sit time and kind of just sprinkled salt all over the garments. Ooops. Now, with this dye, you don’t need to let it sit overnight if you don’t want to. Mine only sat for probably 2 to 2 ½ hours before I rinsed it and the color took surprisingly well! There was some bleeding with the red, which means my white sections are more of a pink now, but I think it just makes it look well worn and loved. There ended up being too much blue on the bandana, but I still think it looks great.

When morning time came, I woke up before Ariel, got everything rinsed out really well and into the washer and dryer. For the first wash, don’t put any other clothes in there, and only a little bit of detergent. It will help set your color better that way. Everything was all dry and ready for her by the time she woke up and she was so excited she had to wear her tie-dye outfit for the day!! As a last minute adjustment, I decided to add something to her shorts. I took a back permanent marker and wrote "love" in bubble letters, made a peace sign/ladybug hybrid, and added a smiling sun and flower!

Look forward to more tie-dye design experiments from us! We had so much fun this time that we can’t wait to do it again! Also, don’t forget to follow us on Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram, and like us on Facebook! If you have projects of your own you would like to share with us, we like to look and get ideas! So tag us!