Hello, hope you're all doing well. It's been a while since I posted about my blog's new direction. In the past few weeks, I've been scouring the internet and the world around me for inspiration. I've been really liking lots of colour everywhere and I've incorporated this ideology into the clothes I buy. It's this mindset of colour that brought me to the idea of tie-dye. I've been wanting to try this for so long and while I had some spare time I decided to give it a go while Ciaran was down visiting.
First, we prepped our surface with a huge sheet of plastic to stop the dye from going everywhere. We collected four plastic bottles and proceeded to make the dye. The dye was shaken into the bottles one by one, and we filled these with warm water and about one-quarter of it with salt. (The salt is what makes the colour set). Then we shook until all the dye had dissolved.
The colours we used:
You'll need:
- A plain white t-shirt
- Dyes (as many colours as you wish)
- Four elastic bands
- 750g of salt
Next, I used four elastic bands separate the fabric into four sections. Then I repeated this action but in the opposite direction until the fabric was separated into eight sections. I found this a bit tricky, to get the sections as even as possible. As you can, I didn't succeed in getting it perfect, but close to that is good enough.
I poured the dye into one of the eight section, making sure to cover all the white fabric, repeating the same colour in the section opposite. I repeated this with the other colours until the fabric was completely covered. I then flipped the fabric over and repeated the dyeing process, making sure I aligned the colours on this side with the sections of the other side.
This is the t-shirt after it was dyed, as you can see the dye was extremely dark. We decided to allow these to drip dry over the course of a day. As it turned out, due to the really wet weather at the time of making the tie-dyes, it took two days. The material was really stiff and heavy due to the dye drying. Then we moved on to the next steps: washing the excess dye out!
I filled a big plastic container three-quarters full with cold water. The water turned practically black the first time I wrung the fabric out in the water. This is to be expected, as there is a lot of excess dye left over, so don't be alarmed. The salt in the mixture will have made a lot of the dye set, so you won't lose the colours on the fabric.
The second time the fabric was wrung out in the water, the colour that came out was a lot less concentrated. This is exactly what you want, as it shows that most of the unnecessary dye has been removed. The aim is to wash out as much as you can so that there isn't a risk of the dye destroying other items of clothing. The fabric was wrung out more time before it was placed in the washing machine with the other tie-dye we'd made.
As you can see from this photo, the colours are a lot lighter than the shades you saw in the photo of the fabric freshly dyed. The orange is really prominent and I was really happy with how my first attempt with tie-dye went. There are so many different techniques you can do to create different designs, I have saved these designs into my Pinterest account if you're interested in finding more.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
