Tuesday, August 25, 2020

How To Tie Dye From Start To Finish

Hi Foxy Friends! I know it's been a while. I always have all these intentions to blog, but then I just don't. Take this post for example...I started writing this over a month ago, and actually made these shirts back in April. Working from home and trying to keep the kids occupied is hard. I mean you all know what I mean. And then I just haven't had the mojo to do anything. Don't worry though, I've been taking lots of videos and pictures of things that I have been doing, so the content is there, just haven't been motivated. I did these Tie Dye shirts in April...so that's how far behind I am...oops.


In any case, it's here now. As I was watching videos and tutorials on how to Tie Dye, I realized that NONE of them ever covered how they were washing them. Do they do them separate, together, 5 million loads of laundry?! I needed to know, so I figure you would want to know the process of tie dying from start to finish. So let's get started. Here is a list of everything I used:

Video if you are more a show me how to do it type of person, like me.


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What You'll Need:

Tie Dye Kit Womans T-Shirt Womans Long Sleeve Hoodie Womans Cropped Hoodie Kids T-Shirts Kids Sweatshirt

Plastic Drop Cloth
Disposable Foil Tray Color Catcher

Directions:


Step 1 - Get Shirts wet, wring out as much as possible.


Tip: If you have a lot of shirts to do, put in washer in a rinse and spin cycle (mine is10 minutes), saves your hands from having to wring out all those shirts/sweatshirts!

Step 2 - Tie up/rubberband shirts. There is no real wrong way to do this. The classic tie dye shirt is the swirl method. But I really like the scrunch method.


Tip: It's okay to start rubberbanding and then realize it's not working to start over. Don't get frustrated, just keep going.

Step 3 - Fill dye bottles with water. The set that I bought, came with small bottles, so I switched the powder dye into larger bottles and filled with water.


Tip: Careful when shaking bottles, as some bottles are not completely shake proof.

Step 4 - Start dying your shirts/pants/socks, whatever!




Tip: use a foil baking pan, put shirt in it and dye inside of that, makes for way less of a mess. Of course also put protective plastic under that, can never be too careful!


Another Tip: Remember which colors when mixed together will make other colors. Sometimes we forget and we put Blue and and Yellow near each other and you get a lovely shade of green...sometimes we don't want that.

Step 5 - Put in baggie and let sit overnight or 24 hours. The more pigment you want, the longer you should let it sit. If you want the colors to be pastel, let sit for shorter amount of time, 12ish hours.



Step 6 - Take clothes out of baggies and rinse. If you want to keep the white part of your shirt, white, rinse first with the rubbers bands still intact. When it starts to rinse clear, take rubber bands off and continue to rinse until water runs clear.


Tip: If you want to keep the white whiter, then rinse your shirt/sweatshirt before taking off the rubber bands. Rinse as much color out as you can before taking those rubber bands off.

Step 7 - Wash clothes. To save on laundry, wash like colors together. Use a color catcher to catch the inevitable dye that still has the potential to ruin your whole project!

I also put two shirts together that were not in the same color range and it worked out. I wouldn't do that if I actually cared, but I made sure that the water ran clear when I was rinsing and used a color catcher. Watch the video above to see how I washed my shirts exactly.

Step 8 - Put in dryer and enjoy your results! 









So that's it, from start to finish this is how you make and wash your tie dye shirts!
Of course if you are a video person, here is a video for you to watch.