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I’m going to show you how to make circle patterns with tie-dyeing.

I have two examples that I want to show you. In this one I followed a pattern to position my circles, so you can see I have this swirly line that I created with my circles. I

n this one over here I sort of just placed them randomly. I’m going to show you how to make the circles but then the way that you apply the circles is totally up to you and you can follow your creativity.

To make the circles you have several options. The most basic one is just simply pinch the fabric and, using a rubber band or a piece of string, just tie it pretty tight. The place where I’m putting the rubber band won’t get dyed and that will create a somehow uneven circle or shape.

If you wanted your circle to be really even, then you can use something with a circular section such as a button or a quarter coin, or even a chickpea or a marble and you would place it under your fabric like this, and then you gather the fabric around. Kind of like making it trapped inside of a pocket. And then again, using a rubber band, or a string, you would tie it around it as tight as you can because the rubber band is what’s making the resist for the dye to get in.

Using these you’ll get more of this effect, where you have a really neat circular section. And you can even play with different sizes. You can have big circles and small circles. For instance, if I wanted to make a really big circle just by pinching it, I would pinch in the same way, and then, instead of putting my rubber band really close to the tip of the pinch, I would just put it here in the bottom and then I would have a huge circular section created by this. So I’m going to do that also.

And always remember to have your rubber bands as tight as possible because that is really the only thing that is working here to make the circles. And if you get them too tight in the end you can always cut them and not have to bother with untying them.

So in this example I made a couple of ways you can do your circular shapes, and I’m going to dip it in a dye bath that I previously made, just by mixing the dye with a dye activator. And as usual, it will just stay here for one hour and then you can rinse it and you will be ready to go.

So this is how you make circular shapes using tie-dyeing.

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I’m teaching you how to do a spiral using tie dye, this time. As you can see you follow the spiral line around here in the pattern, and that is actually created by pinching the fabric and swirling it around, and it’s the swirling that will create the spiral. You can see with my motion I’m already creating a spiral, too. So I’m going to showcase using a piece of wet fabric.

Even though you should always start with your fabric wet for dying, the spiral is much, much easier to do if you really start with it wet. So in other techniques you can first do the tie and the resist and then soak them in water. For this one I really recommend doing it while it’s wet. So you want to pinch in the center of your spiral and keep holding on to that and then with your other hand, you want to sort of swirl the fabric around.

The fabric will kind of want to move in it’s own way and you should respect that. In the end you finish with something that kind of looks like a cinnamon roll a little bit, and on the bottom side normally, it’s much clearer the spiral shape. And then you want to use either cords or rubber bands to keep it gathered like this. And you’ll lose a little bit of its shape, but you also don’t want the rubber bands to be super-tight in here.

So just enough to help it keep the shape that it has. Maybe my first rubber band is too tight, I’m going to undo it. I think it’s better and in the end those just look like a tied spiral. At this point you could dunk it in a dye bath that you have previously prepared. Like I have this one I prepared as usual, just by mixing the dye with water and some dye activator, such as soda ash. In that case you’ll dunk it and you let it sit for one hour.

After one hour you remove the ties, wash it, and you’re ready to go. The other thing you can do when you do the spiral that I’m going to show you… You don’t want to have strings on your fabric, too. I’m going to show you now is in case you wanted to do a spiral with more than one color. So again, pinching in the center of your spiral, swirling the fabric around, sort of helping it out with your other hand. And then I’m just going to use my squeeze bottles for this one.

So I’m going to pick; maybe I’m picking red, a yellow, maybe I’ll just keep it to two colors. For this technique, because there’s no risk of the fabric falling apart when you put it in a dye bath, so you don’t need to tie it. So your spiral will be able to like keep more of the spiral shape. When you’re applying the dye you want to make sure that you’re following the spiral curve with your squeeze bottle.

I’ll start in the middle and I’m following it with one of the colors and you want to make sure you add enough to go through all the layers and then you’ll pick the second color and you want to apply it sort of in the spaces that the first color didn’t get, also following the spiral.

You can also get creative and you can apply it in lines from the center towards the end or you can apply more than one color if you want. I often like to flip it and do the same thing on the other side, even if it’s the messier side and you can’t see the spiral as well, but just to make sure that both sides of my fabric will have color.

After this step you just go cover your spiral with a plastic bag and you let it cure from 4 to 24 hours. Then you can wring it, as well. So I showed you a way to do spirals using tie dye, using two different dying techniques, immersion dyeing and dyeing with squeeze bottles.

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I’m going to show you how to dye a pair of stockings.

There’s many ways you can do it and my favorite is just to apply colors randomly. I really like the watercolor effect that you can get out of this; I’m not a big fan of big patterns in tights so I’m going to keep these really subtle but also really vibrant with the colors.

So, I got my tights wet and, just as a side note, you want to make sure that your tights are made out of cotton or bamboo. If you’re working with fiber reactive dyes, those are the dyes we are using today.

I wet my fiber and I’m going to soak it into the activator solution and let it stay in there for 5 to 10 minutes. After 5 minutes I’m going to wring them out, squeezing out the excess and place them on my working table.

So, as I said, I’m going for a pretty watercolor whole effect, so I’m going to scrunch them together like in a tiny ball, like pretty randomly. And I’m going to start applying the colors that I chose which are lilac, mulberry and aqua.

Starting with the lilac, I’m going to randomly start putting it in to, and you can build the color combinations as you go. All you want is in the end probably not to have white spaces but if you want the white spaces too, you can try to keep some of the spaces not dyed. I’m going to add my mulberry color.

Now, because I want all of these to be really combined and the transitions to be pretty subtle, I’m going to work my tights into the puddle forcing all of the colors to combine with each other and not having any white spaces. And you can see that like now what we have is a combination of all the colors that I chose previously and I think I’m liking some of the white spaces. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the universe and constellations and I actually think that you’ll look really cool once it’s stretched so maybe I’m going to stop working it out. Let me take a look at other areas.

No, I think I’m happy with it but, this is a technique that you pretty much can stop once you’re happy. Imagine that you didn’t like this white area in here, you could go back, pour a little more dye, working into the fabric and make that whiter spot disappear more.

At any point you should lift the ties and take a look at them to see if you’re happy with the final result. And when you are, you should lay them flat on a table, cover them with a plastic bag, let them cure for 4 to 24 hours and after that, rinse them, dry them and wear them.

And this is how you can tie dye stockings.

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Hi guys. My name is Issa and I’m the dyer and teacher and studio manager at The Textile Art Center.

I got into textiles because I studied textile conservation and the reason for that is because my family has always been really passionate about textiles. All my grandmothers and my mother, they’re makers and I grew up in a really textile environment and I really, really love it.

That’s what led me to the Textile Art Center, which is a place where you can learn all sorts of textile art techniques. We have an extensive programming for adults and for children, including weaving, dyeing, embroidery, screen printing and of course, tie dyeing too.

I really, really like dyeing and I like tie dyeing and that’s my expertise. I just really like how you’re able to make your own colors and design patterns and just like change the surface of fabrics.

I hope you had as much fun as I did during these tutorials and if you want to learn more about it, please check the Textile Art Center. Otherwise, please try it at home. As you saw, it’s pretty easy and it’s a lot of fun. I promise.

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I’m going to show you how to create shapes and words and whatever images you want using Elmer’s glue. This is not really tie dye but a variation, but its a really fun project and I’m sure you’ll like it. All you need is fabric and plain old, white glue and a paintbrush, and then some dye, of course. You want to start by pre-activating your fabric by soaking it in the soda wash or washing soda solution and then drying it.

This is again a dry technique. With a paintbrush, after you did all of that, you want to start painting with glue the areas that you want your pattern to appear white. So for instance, if I want to make a heart, and if I want my heart to be white, I would paint my heart with the glue. Making sure that you really go over the fabric and that the glue goes through all the layers and all the fibers. If it’s helpful you can also trace your pattern before you start applying the glue, with a pencil or a disappearing marker.

I’m just going freestyle here. So I have my first heart and I could just make as many as I want or make other shapes if I wanted to. For instance, if I wanted an X too, that’s my X. And then you could continue until you’ve covered all the surface of the fabric. Once you did one side and one side is totally dry, you would then flip it and do the same thing on the other side.

For this technique to work you really need to apply on both sides. Especially on thicker fabrics, because otherwise the dye will just run on the back of the fabric. So I’m going to continue making my pattern and I’ll show to dye it in a little bit. You don’t really need to use Elmer’s glue. You can use any kind of white glue that is water soluble.

The trick here is that you want to use a glue that is resistant enough while dry to prevent the dye from getting to the surfaces that you’ve covered, but you also want to use a glue that its possible to remove once you’re done with the dying. So no Super Glue, but maybe you can test a couple of glues before you engage on your final project.

After you’re done painting your pattern with glue, we want to make sure that is completely dry. I normally use a blow dryer to just speed dry it. But really make sure that all the layers are dried and they’re not sticky. Then you can feel that its dry when it becomes really crunchy, almost paper-like. I’m going to use red color and a paintbrush.

The trick with the dying is even though the glue will be somehow resistant, you don’t want to insist with your paintbrushes in the areas where that you put glue. So you are going to somehow try to go around and you’ll see the pattern appearing at the same time. You can see the hearts and the X’s that I was doing before are not getting dyed, because the glue is preventing the dye from running there.

So actually if you watch closely you can see it. I missed a heart here, but hopefully my glue will be enough. So I’m painting this one, but you could also dunk it in a dye bath, as long as the water is pretty cold and in that case you really want to make sure that you remove it after one hour, because otherwise the glue might start to soften and you’ll lose your pattern.

You could also use a spray bottle for a different effect. After you’re done painting, all you need to do is wrap it with a plastic bag and let it cure for 4 to 24 hours and then you have to rinse it really well. The dye will rinse pretty fast, but the glue will be harder to remove.

So really insist on those areas and make sure you remove all the glue. Maybe you’ll want to use some soap and some warm water, as well. And this will be your final result, and this is how you can do hearts and stars or any shapes that you want using Elmer’s glue on fabric.

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Another really cool tie dyeing technique is called pole wrapping, and as the name says, you’ll pretty much be wrapping your fabric around a pole. The effect that that makes is a zebra stripe kind of effect and it looks really complicated, but actually it’s really easy to make. You’ll see how easy pretty soon. So you want to have your fabric wet as usual and you need also, a PVC pipe. These are pretty easy to get and they come in different sizes.

You can get them wider, but mine is pretty narrow, and the different sizes will make the pattern appear differently. So you want to start placing your fabric on the pole and as you roll it, you want to be scrunching it. So what you’re trying to do here is to roll all your fabric around the pole, trying to avoid having one layer of fabric on top of layer of fabric. So this is achieved really by as you roll it, just continuing to scrunch it. Another section, scrunching it; another section, scrunching it.

So in the end you have your fabric all wrapped around the pole and scrunched and you see that all these pleats here, that’s what’s going to make the zebra kind of stripes in your fabric. If you were dunking this into a dye bath, you also want to make sure that it remains nice and scrunched like this, so you can wrap it around with string or you can also just use a couple of rubber bands throughout, just to make sure it stays in this position. A little twine in the middle.

Now I’m going to give it a final scrunch. After you’re done you just dunk it in your dye bath. You want to make sure that your dye bath is deep enough for the fabric to be totally submerged and you just leave it there for one hour. After that you can rinse it and see the pattern that you made. So this is how you can make pole wrapping tie dye.

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I’m going to teach you how to do a bulls-eye pattern, which is a favorite amongst kids and adults as well, and you can use them for all different purposed. In this one I just use one color, but I’m going to show you two ways. One, making the bulls-eye with just one color like this and the other making each one of the circles of the bulls-eye a different color. So I’m starting by explaining how you make the bulls-eye. It’s so easy.

You have your fabric pre-wet and you pinch on what you want to be the center of the bulls-eye. You tie a section of it and you’ve pretty much made the first ring of your bulls-eye. If you want it to be closer the center you just need to put your rubber band closer to the center of the pinch, but I don’t want it like that. So I’m going to build my second ring of the bulls-eye by pinching the section immediately below, so I’m keeping my rings at about an inch, an inch and a half distant.

Again, you want your rubber bands to be really tight, so the dye can’t pass through it. So I’ve made two rings on my bulls-eye already. I’m going to make a third one and you can add as many rings as you want. At some point, if your rubber bands are too close together, there won’t be a clear separation between the two resists, so you want to always try to keep them at least a quarter inch apart.

But besides that, you can have as many as you want. I’m going to add my final one, and at this point it’s easier for me to tie it from the other end. Always remembering to get it very tight. This is it. This is my bulls-eye before I dye it. So if I want it to be just one color, like the example I showed, I would just dunk it in a dye bath and leave it there for one hour. Then rinse it and it will be white on the color that I chose. So I’m going to dunk this one here.

And I’m going to prepare, quickly a second one, which I’ll explain how to do the different colors. So again, pinching in the center, adding my first ring, and maybe on this one I’ll keep it simple and I’ll make it just three rings. I’m adding my first ring, second ring. This is a great project to do with kids or even with your friends, and you can do it on t-shirts or any other garments.

But you could also just do a bulls-eye on fabric and then transform it into a game, like a toss game or something like that, because then you have your target pretty much made. Last ring, okay. So I have four different sections which will be for different rings on my bulls-eye. And I can make them all different colors. So I’ll start by soaking my fabric in the dye activator solution, which has the dye activator or washing soda dissolved in it. So you want to soak it for about five minutes. After five minutes you just take it out, and you want to wring it out to take out the excess, and then put it out on the table.

I’m going to choose some colors, maybe some reds, some yellow, some blue and maybe the last one, some purple. So my first ring I will want to be red, so I’m just going to apply the red straight into it. And then the second one I like blue and finally, the yellow. The colors will sort of blend into each other in the parts that the resist wasn’t really that good. And also they can make these darker lines that you see in here, kind of this radiant type effect and it will be really neat. After you apply your color you just need to wrap it in a plastic bag. Let it cure 4 to 24 hours and then this is how you make a bulls-eye with tie dye.

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I’m going to teach you how to make any shape you want, up here on your fabric using tie dye. For instance in this example, I have these saw-edged shapes appearing and I have another example where I have these flower-like stars appearing too, but you really can make any shape you want. For that, all you need is shapes to use as resists. Any circular jar lids will make awesome circles, but you can also get rubber flooring. You can get it in any construction material store. You can cut it with an Exacto knife and transform it into any shape you desire; stars, hearts, waves, you think about it.

So I’m going to demonstrate with the circular ones. So pretty much all you have to do is to fold your fabric, and you want to think about the size of your shape when folding. For instance, I’m doing it with these circles, so I want my folds to be almost the size of my circle, but it can be smaller because my circle needs to fit in them. So I’m going to fold my fabric in thirds, using the accordion fold technique and when I place my circling in it, I can see that it actually fits. But it might be a little loose in it., so I’m going to go back and I might fold it into four creases and I think it would be a better fit.

So let’s see. Yeah, perfect. So after that, you want to fold it the other direction, also an accordion fold, as many times as your circle can fit. So I fold the first one, and again I double-check if this is a good fit for my circle, and it is. Maybe I’ll adjust it a little bit and then you just keep folding back and forth as any other folding technique. The last one and then this is where the magic happens. Using any shape you want you’re going to sandwich it between the shapes that you’ve chosen.

So I’ve chosen the circles. I’m going to place one circle in the front, one circle in the back and I’m going to fill it out and make sure that the two shapes are pretty well aligned, so that one is not like hanging here and the other one hanging there. You want them to be exactly in the same place, and you can feel it with your fingers, too. And then using any size of clamps; I like these ones, even though they’re sometimes a little bit hard to open; but they put a lot of pressure on it, so it’s pretty good. You want to make sure that you clamp the shapes in place, so they can’t go anywhere.

And this is all. You dunk it in your dye bath, and what will happen is that in each fold, the circle will make a resist. In this case, I used a shape as resist that was a saw-edged kind of shape and it was again, folded like this, the accordion fold and this one I just folded in half, because it was a smaller one. I put a saw-edged shape in one side, a saw-edged shape on the other side and what happens is that it multiplies for as many layers as you have. So just like that, you can make any shapes you want. So I’m going to dunk it in my dye bath, that was just prepared by mixing some dye with the dye activator, and after one hour I can rinse it and see the results. And this is how you can tie dye using shapes.

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I’m going to teach you how to dye a very simple tote bag using tie-dye.

One of my favorite techniques to dye bags is just simply scrunch it in a random way so you can get these very organic but also subtle and cool patterns. I’m going to be using the color black because I like to have black tote bags, and I think it’s a color that matches really well with everything you wear. So I’m going a little bit for the look that you can see me swatch over here.

So, here’s my tote bag, and when you want to do a pretty random scrunching, that’s what you want to think of. Random. Forget placing the scrunching at one end or another end because that will just make a more specific pattern. You want to start gathering your tote bag using your fingers, a little like making these fluff kind of shapes, but you want to keep it random but somehow consistent, so you don’t end up with areas that are totally white and areas that are totally colored.

You might decide to include or not include your straps in the pattern. Maybe now that I see it, I’m going to decide to not include them, so my straps will be fully black and only the body of the bag will be patterned.

So once I gather it, you want to use rubber bands to keep the gathering together. As you can see, there’s not a lot of science to it. You’re pretty much just wrapping your gathering randomly with the rubber bands. And if you want your pattern to be pretty sparse with a lot of white areas, like for instance this one, you should have as many rubber bands as possible.

I’m going to add quite a few. And it’s always good for these projects to have a huge stash of rubber bands, and you can get them pretty much at any office supply store. And they’re super cheap, so don’t worry about using too many. And you can always re-use them for other projects. If you’re careful when you’re removing them, you can just rinse them and then just re-use them on other projects. So there’s very little waste.

Maybe a couple more, but it’s looking pretty good. After you tie it in your scrunch pattern, you want to make sure that you get your tote bag wet before you put it in the dye bath. So I’m going to get it wet right now. I’ve already prepared my dye bath, my black dye bath, by mixing the dye into water and adding the dye activator, or washing soda, to it.

Just a quick tip on dyeing garments black. Black is the hardest color to get. It’s really, really hard to get a pure black. So this is a case where more is better. You really want to add a lot of black dye if you want to go as close to pure black as possible. So I add quite a lot.

After your dye bath is ready and everything is dissolved, you want to enter your fabric in it. And once again, make sure that it stays fully submerged for the full time that it is dyeing. After one hour, you can remove it, take the rubber bands out, and rinse it, and see the results.

So, the bag has been soaking in the dye bath for about an hour, and I just removed it. I wrung out the excess, and I quickly rinsed it with water. I’m about to open the bundle and reveal the results, so let’s see how this looks. Be careful when you’re removing the rubber bands so you don’t splash yourself. Also, you might hurt yourself because the rubber bands are pretty tight, so just be careful with it.

And you can see as I’m opening that we have a couple of lines in the fabric created by the rubber bands, which I think are going to look neat. So many rubber bands, but I guess that’s what’ll make the pattern cooler.

Okay. The moment that we’ve been waiting for the past hour. And this is the final tote bag. So, pretty random tie-dye pattern in the bottom. You also see that something that I find kind of cool happened, that as the dye was traveling to areas that had a slight resistance, the color sort of deconstructed, so you see some purples appearing, and that gives it some more depth.

And the strap ended up being a really solid and nice black, which I think contrasts really well with the rest of it. So, I’m overall happy with the result.

This was how you can tie-dye a tote bag using fabric-reactive dyes.

Transcript

I am going to show you how to tie dye a dress.

For this simple tank top dress, I chose to use a black color, a nickel color, and a bordeaux. I think I am going to go for vertical stripes, pretty random, but keeping it very simple and casual. Let us see how it will work out.

For the skirt I am going to pleat it with my hands and gather it. So, I’m just pulling a layer of fabric. Maybe I’ll show you a different way. So, I am just pulling a layer of fabric and gathering it. I have these simple accordion folds for the stripes. I am going to tie it together using a rubber band. I’m going to put some more on here.

Since the top of the dress is going to be in a different pattern, I am going to focus my rubber bands on this bottom area and then gradually decrease the quantity coming up to the top. I will do a different treatment on the top.

Tie dying is a lot about experimenting. A lot of times I do not really know how a project is going to come out before I do it. The more you do it, the more you will be able to predict how the techniques are going to work out in the garment that you are doing.

It’s kind of important to think about the garment as a whole and the place where you want to put the patterns. For instance, if you place a huge circle right on your belly, maybe you do not want that, or if you want to have an area with a lot of patterns happening or other areas very white. Really think about the garment as a whole before you start tying it.

Because I want striping to happen, but I do not want it to be really obvious, I am going to take my striping things and I am going to start rolling it into a spiral shape. I striped this end of the dress already. I am going to pick the ends of the bottom of the dress and start rolling it in like a spiral. Maybe up to here.

I am going to tie this together with a rubber band. Rubber bands are always your best friends when you are doing tie dying. They just help you hold any pattern that you want to make. The first one is in, with a couple more.

Then for the top of the dress, I think I am going to make a very random tie dye to contrast with the more structural tie dye that I did on the bottom. I am going to scrunch the top randomly leading up to the spiral that I just created with the stripes before.

After you are done, you just want to make sure that the transition area between the randomly scrunched part and the one with the stripes and the spiral is neat. You do not want to end up having a fully colored section there. You want it all to transition pretty easily. I think it looks good so I am going bundle it all together. See how it is a bit separated? I am just going to put a rubber band connecting it with the rest.

This is how it looks before I start dying. Because I am going to use three colors, the easiest way to do this is by using the squeeze bottle technique. That is what I am going to do. I am going to start by getting the fabric wet. After the fabric is wet I am going to soak it in my dye activator solution. which I previously prepared by mixing washing soda and water. It should soak in the dye activator for five to ten minutes. After that, you just squeeze out the excess water and you are ready to dye.

I am going to start applying my colors. I chose two very similar colors, the black and the nickel. I have a more contrasting color which is the bordeaux. I want my dress to end up being mainly black and nickel with just highlights of bordeaux. I am going to be very careful when I use the bordeaux and I am going to leave that for last. My nickel is slightly lighter than the black so I am going to start with that one. I am going to start applying to the dress and see how the color spreads. I’m going to flip it, apply it on the other side. Because this is such a tight bundle, you want to make sure that you get dye through all of the layers so that you do not end up with really white sections.

Sometimes to make sure that the dye goes through all of the layers I even take the tip of the squeeze bottle and press it against the fabric. Through applying pressure I can make sure the dye goes through the fabric. I think it is looking pretty good for the nickel so I am going to start adding little pops of black.

The good thing about leaving the black for after the other lighter colors, is that right now I am noticing big areas that have nickel that I do not want to be as plain. So, because the black dye is stronger than the nickel, I can over dye it and make some variation in it.

I think I am going to start adding little pops of the bordeaux color. I tested it before and it mixes really well with both the black and the nickel. I think this is going to look pretty cool. Coming back to some more black.

I sometimes open my bundle a little bit to peek and to see if I have areas that are very white. I think this is looking pretty good. Maybe I will put the squeeze in there.

Massaging it a little bit forces the colors to blend with each other and forces them to mix so you do not have as much of a contrast between color A and color B. It also forces the colors to go right through the middle and makes sure that you do not have that many white areas.

After you are done with the dying you want to cover your garment with a plastic bag and let it cure for four to twenty-four hours. After that you carefully remove all the rubber bands, you rinse, you dry it, and you are ready to wear it.

My dress has been curing for about four hours now so I think it is ready to be opened. I just rinse it really quickly and ring it out and I am about to remove the rubber bands. Always be really careful when removing the rubber bands so it does not splash anything onto you and that you do not hurt yourself.

You can always reuse these rubber bands too by rinsing them in water and then letting them dry to save for your next project. If you are careful in removing them and you do not break them, you can always use them again. If you get really impatient you can always cut them. I think this is unfolding pretty well.

This is the top part in which I had gone pretty random. I actually think it looks pretty cool. I really like how the colors blend together. It gives a bit of a punk aesthetic to it. Let us see how the bottom looks. I remember that I put the rubber bands on the bottom really tight so this is probably going to take a little longer to remove them. Slow and steady, you will get there. First one. Second one. Third one.

Removing rubber bands is sometimes harder when you are wearing gloves, so if you are sure that you gave it a really good rinse you can take off your gloves at this time. Last one. And it’s reveal time.

This is what the bottom looks like. Actually let me show you the front of it. Remember how on the bottom we were going for vertical stripes that would look a little bit organic, so not totally geometric.

I am pretty pleased. We see a bit of box action happening because of the rubber bands but we have solid vertical stripes. I really like it overall. I think it is a really good project.

This is how you tie dye a dress.

Transcript

I’m going to show you how to tie-dye a t-shirt. I have an example here in which I actually did some stripes and this one look that you can go for and for the stripes, which is pretty much gather it and rubber band it and repeat it. And for this one I’m going to make some circular shapes happening using resists and clamps.

So this is my shirt and I’m envisioning my circle shapes happening here, so I’m going to accordion fold the bottom of the t-shirt like this, making sure that it’s nice and neat, because it is a t-shirt and you want to be able to wear it. And then I’m going to fold it on the other way, accordion fold as well.

If we wouldn’t look to the top of this t-shirt, in which I actually didn’t do much, if we just center our attentions to the bottom of the t-shirt, you can see that is now folded into a square section. In this square I’m going to place one of my circles on the top and the other one of my circles are on the bottom and make sure that they’re pretty tight and fitting together.

I’m going to use a clamp to clamp it in place. After that I want to get my t-shirt wet before I put it in my immersion vat. After you tie your shirt or you’ve made your pattern, now you want to prepare your immersion vat. I chose a green color and I already dissolved the dye in my dye vat, so all I have to do now is to add my dye activator.

Remember that the dye activator or washing soda only dissolves in hot water, so you want to dissolve it separately before you put it in the dye vat. So I have some hot water in here and the proportion is about 9 teaspoons per gallon of water. I have slightly less of a gallon, probably, about a half, so I’m going to add 4-5 teaspoons to it.

And I wanted to remind you again that the purpose of the dye activator, as the name says is to make the dye active and able to fix with the fiber, so this is really a step that you don’t want to skip, otherwise your dye will just run the first time you wash it. So make sure you really dissolve well the dye activator before you add it to your dye bath.

I think that’s good enough, so I’m going to put it in, give it a stir. Now I’m going to add my t-shirt to my dye bath and its going to be in there for about one hour and it should be really one hour. If you see the color getting darker than you want it, you cannot remove it before one hour, because one hour is the minimum time that the dye and the dye activator and the fiber will take to connect all with each other.

If you see that it got a little bit darker than you wanted, then you know that next time we just need to make a more diluted dye bath. If it got lighter than you wanted, then you’re in good luck and you can always re-dye it again, and just make the dye bath more concentrated. So I’m about to dunk it. I’m just going to shift my clamps a little bit, so it can fit. Again, make sure it’s fully submerged so you can have an even dying in the end.

We’ll wait one hour to see the final results. My t-shirt has been soaking in the dye vat for the past hour. I just removed it, wrung out the excess, quickly rinse in to water, and I’m about to reveal the result. So let’s see how it turned out. Removing the clamps, which are pretty tight which is a good sign. What a neat circle. This is a good sign, hopefully. That’s really cool. So this how it looks overall.

I’m sort of happy, sort of not happy. I’m just going to go through with a couple of things that happened to explain if this had happened to you, how you could correct it. So as you can see, not all of the circles appeared as separate and that happened, mainly because the margin that we left in between the circles was not as big. So for the next time, once you’re actually folding it into a square, maybe we need to fold into bigger squares, so there’s more margin around the circle.

The other thing that happened, which was probably my mistake for rushing, was that these center areas are actually still dry. So the dye didn’t penetrate all evenly around the circles, because I encountered a dry fabric. So for next time maybe we should soak the t-shirt longer, to make sure that it’s fully wet before we dye it. But overall I think it looks kind of cool, even though its not a fully complete circle, but at least the two top ones look like it. I think it looks kind of funky and kind of nice. But hey, we only learn through our mistakes, so this was a good experiment and this is how you tie-dye a t-shirt.

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I’m going to show you how to make a diamond pattern using tie dye and this is actually one of my favorite techniques. I have an example here that you can see the diamond, and this is one version of it, and then I have a bigger diamond shape version of it in here. You can see that all the patterns are created by using lines. And for this we’ll be doing some folding. This pattern really only involves folding and creasing.

So you have your fabric and you want to start by accordion folding in one direction. So in this direction, I’m going to accordion fold it in three, because its a pretty narrow fabric and I want my diamonds to be big. What you have to keep in mind is that the folds that you’re making are actually going to be the lines on your pattern. So if you make the folds pretty narrow then your pattern will be smaller. If you make the folds pretty big, then your pattern will be bigger.

So I folded up already my fabric in three parts and I did the accordion folding. Now I’m going to fold it in triangular shapes. Also, accordion so I’ll fold one way to one side and the other way on the other side. So I’m folding it and you want to do this until all you have is a triangular section little bundle. And then my last one is going to be a funky looking triangle, but that is okay. So at the end of it you should finish with a triangle little folded bundle.

So to remind you again, what we’re really doing here, we’re creasing and folding the fabric to create the lines that you will see on the diamond. So all my lines here will actually create these lines in the diamond. For instance, in this one it’s pretty easy to see that I have one side here, the other side here, and the other side here, then they will repeat because you did the accordion folding.

If you’re going to put this in the immersion bath, you want to make sure that your triangle will stay together. The easiest way to do that is by using a string, a rubber band, so you might want to just place a rubber band around the two edges of the triangle. Remember that, because you’re putting a rubber band in this part, where the rubber band is the dye will won’t really go through. So on top of it all you also have a resist here in the front faces of it.

You can see in my example that these triangles in the corner where my front and my back and you can see tiny resists with the rubber bands. If you use pretty thin rubber bands, they’ll almost be invisible and that’s my favorite method, but otherwise you could just put a clamp or anything you wanted. But you’ve always got to think that whatever you use to keep the triangle together will cause a resist as well. At this point you could just dunk it in the dye bath.

Normally prepared just by mixing dye with a dye activator and you let it sit for one hour and then after that you rinse it, and you’re good to go. These are just two examples of how to make diamond shapes using tie dye, such as this.

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I’m going to show you how to do stitch resist. This is a really cool technique and even though it’s a little bit more advanced I’m going to guide you through it. This wave pattern was achieved just by stitching the waves that you see and gathering them together. The only stitch that you’ll need to use is a running stitch, which is a pretty easy stitch that even a child can do. I’m going to show you how I did it.

Using a needle and really strong thread you’re going to start the running stitch following the shape that you want to do. I did waves. You could do circles, flowers, heart shapes, whatever you want. The trick here is that you want to do the stitches pretty small, and you want to have really strong thread, so when you’re gathering it you can gather it pretty tightly.

So I’m making my running stitch. I’ve stitched most of the wave, I just have a couple of stitches left. I know that this can be a pretty time-consuming technique, but the results are totally rewarding, so I encourage you to give it a try. This is how it should look before you start gathering. You see that I did a little bit of gathering already, but it’s just a plain running stitch.

This is the part now where you really will be thankful if you’ve chosen really strong thread. Because you want to start gathering all your stitches, like making pleats as tight as possible. The pattern will only appear if you actually make it pretty tight, so really go as strong as possible here. You see here that I’m making these little puff pleating here and this is what it will look like.

If I had done the same thing in all of my waves here in the fabric, you would just see it gathered in different places. So after you gather it, you also want to tie it pretty hard, because once you put it in the dye bath, the gathering will likely come undone. At this time we don’t need the needle yet and this is really strong thread and this is what it will look like before you put it in the dye bath. Just these little puffs and you see it on the other side you have all these gatherings here. Every little pleat that you formed with the stitch will create these little dots that you see. And that’s how you create your pattern.

You should play around with different thicknesses of threads. Also, with different shapes, and make some swatches in the beginning. It is sometimes a frustrating technique, because you spend all that time doing the stitching, and after the dying, not a lot of results appear. But I can guarantee that you’ll get better as you go, and one day you’ll be able to do something like this. This is how you do stitch resisting tie dye.

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One of my favorite ways to create stripes and lines is to just use masking tape. This is the only technique that I’ll suggest that you don’t start with your fabric wet, because it’s really hard to stick tape on to wet fabric. So you want to pre-activate your fabric by soaking it in the soda ash dye activator solution and then you want to let it dry.

So my fabric has been activated already, and what I’m going to do, I’m just going to glue masking tape and create the patterns that I want with it. You want to make sure that the masking tape is adhering pretty well and you don’t have any bubbles. I’m going to go for a mix of stripes and maybe a rectangular shape, too. And you can place the tape in any way that you wanted.

It is really your design. This is not going to be a very precise design, so maybe make sure that all your other lines and figures are like on the wider side. What I mean by precise is that the tape will cause some resistance to the dye, but you want to be totally blocking it, so some will seep through and so, you don’t want to have two patterns close together.

After you’re done with one side, you need to tape it on the same places on the other side. You need to do this because otherwise the dye will just run on the back of the fabric and you won’t get any resistance at all. So I’m just redoing exactly the same ones that I did in the front, but in the back. It will be really easy to see them, and especially because I’m using this blue tape.

A couple more. This is a great way to combine with different dye applications. I’m going to apply the dye using painting, but you could use a spray bottle or just a squeeze bottle. You can’t really put in an immersion vat, because the tape won’t be strong enough to hold to the fabric, if its immersed in water. But otherwise you can apply the dye in multiple ways.

Okay, I’m done. I’m going to start applying my dye. So using a paintbrush, you always want to start pretty far away from the edges of your tape. You want to like see how the dye runs to it and you won’t want to apply directly near the tape, because that will just make the resistance not work. So I’m going to start in the middle and you can see how the dye is running a little bit wider than my brush stroke, so I’m going to go a little closer to the tape, but not that close to it, and I’m going to wait to see if it gets there.

These corners ones are always tricky because you never know how close you can go. For bigger areas you could use a wider brush or even a foam brush, that will just make it go faster. Again remember to not go too close to the edges of the tape, and really watch for any bubbles that might happen, where the tape is not totally attached to the fabric.

I just wanted to remind you again, that instead of using the painting technique, you could be using a spray bottle or just a squeeze bottle directly or you could be using a foam brush. You’ll get different effects by using any of those other techniques. After you’ve painted, you’ll just cover it with a plastic bag, and let it cure for 4 to 24 hours. After that remove the tape, rinse it, and you see a pattern appear.

So I’m about to reveal our tape experiment. So I’m going to remove the tape slowly and you can see that even if some dye creeped through that most of the resistance was actually kept and we see our triangle and tri-pattern appearing. Let me just remove a couple more tapes and I’ll show you the final results in one second.

Okay, and this is what the final result looks like. Again, you see that some of it creeped, but it’s a little bit lighter, just like the color deconstructing. But it looks kind of cool and it is such an easy technique that you can quickly make to achieve any striping effect that you might want and this is how you can tie dye using tape.

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In this video I’m going to teach you how to tie-dye yarn.

This technique can be very useful when you’re trying to achieve a dyeing effect on the yarn that you have that you can’t find in stores or if you’re a knitter and you want to develop your very own colors. I think you’ll like this a lot. I have a couple of examples here illustrating different techniques that you can do. For instance, this skein was just dipped on one end so half of it is dyed this turquoise color and the other half is white. On this one we just did a very subtle tie-dye with different colors using light yellow, some orange, but it’s a very variegated effected but very subtle. This one too by using more contrasting colors. Still variegated but using lilac and yellow.

In this tutorial I’m going to illustrate a different technique. A little bit like this one but instead of leaving one end un-dyed I’m actually going to dip each end in a different dye color.

To start, all you need is yarn. It should be from a natural fiber if you’re using fiber reactive dyes. So silk, wool, cotton. You can’t really dye the yarn in these shapes so if you’re buying it in a ball form you first have to convert the ball form into a skein.

To make a skein it’s really easy and you can use a skein winder or other tools, but you can just use your own body and your arms. The easiest way to make a skein is to actually grab one end and then just wrap it around your elbow and construct the skein like that. You can go as thick as you want but you get the idea.

Once you’re done with your skein you just want to tie the two ends together and maybe make some loops around the skein to keep it together and from not losing it’s shape. Once you have your yarn into the skein form you’re ready to dye it.

First, you want to get it wet, as in any dyeing technique, and you want to prepare your dye bath. I prepared a yellow dye bath in here and a blue dye bath in here. I just added the dye to the water and I add some dye activator to it. After this I’m going to dip one of the ends in the yellow and I’m going to dip the other end in the blue.

Maybe I want to place them a little closer together and I’m just going to let it stay like this for one hour. During that hour the dye will sort of walk through the fiber and you’ll see that it will eventually meet in here. After one hour, too, you’re ready to rinse and to let it dry.

If you ‘re dyeing wool you want to make sure it dries flat and slowly and after that you’re ready to knit or crochet or do anything you want with your yarn.

This is how you tie-dye yarn.

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For this project, I’m going to teach you how to tie-dye sneakers.

Sneakers can’t really be tie-dyed in the perfect sense of the word. It would be really hard to scrunch them and to tie them, but they can be painted to pretend that they were tie-dyed.

So for my sneakers, I took out the laces. I soaked them in water. I also already soaked them in the dye activator solution which is made with water and washing soda for 5 minutes, and then I wrung them out. So they’re ready to be dyed.

I selected 5 colors and I tested them out in a paper towel. So you see, I’m going to go for the sort of rainbow, gradient look. From yellow to pink to purple to aqua blue, and ending in green. So we’ll see how this will go.

One suggestion that I’ll make to you, and this is how I’m going to do my work, is to work on both sneakers at the same time. And that’s also to avoid having one sneaker look different from the other. That way if you make a mistake, you can kind of replicate the mistake in the other sneaker, so I think that’s just a good tip.

I’m going to start with a brush and I’m going to start with the yellow. So the way I’m going to address this, the way I planned it, is that the top of my sneaker is going to be white and then I’m going to have yellow in this part. And then towards the middle I’m going to start working the purple color, pink, and towards the heel, the aqua and the green.

Okay, let’s get started.

You can use any kind of brush to do this technique. I’m starting with a smaller one because I want to have more control over the quantity of dye that I’m putting. I’m unsure how the dye is going to run in this sneaker, so I want to make sure that I’m not putting a lot of quantity at once. But so far so good, and it’s looking great. And the feathered edges, kind of the tie-dye’ish look, will happen just by the dye running in the sneaker’s material. So don’t really worry about having rigid lines. Of course you can always work it out with your paint brush, somehow, pulling the dye towards the front. But I’m kind of happy how the yellow is looking in the front right now, so I’m going to move to my pink color.

For the pink color, because I don’t know really well how this transition is going to end, so instead of starting it right where the yellow ends, I’m going to start a little bit backwards to give space for the dye to run.

You could decide while dying these sneakers that maybe you wouldn’t want the top dyed, and that would be a cool look too. If you wanted to go for that, it would be a good idea to put masking tape on the areas that you don’t want the dye to go. In this case, I actually want to dye them all including the parts where the laces go, so I’m not worried with that.

Okay, going to work a little bit on the second shoe.

And again, in this technique, it’s really important to test how the colors mix with each other, because that’s what you’re trying to mix in the transition area. So always test the colors, especially if you’re unsure about them and have never worked with them before. It’s better to prevent than to have a garment not as pretty because you didn’t like the colors in the end.

I’m done with pretty much all of the colors. I did the yellow, the pink, the purple, the blue. I went back a little bit to work the transition area, and I just did that by going with almost a dry brush and kind of like pushing the dye into the areas I wanted.

I’m ready for my final color which is green, and that will go in the heel part. And I’m really happy with how this is looking so far. As you can see it was pretty easy.

So again, I’m working the transition area by just pushing the dye.

Okay, if you think that some areas are a little bit lighter than you wanted them to be, you can always go back and apply a second layer of dye. And again, I just wanted to remind you, if you wanted to make a different pattern or if you didn’t want to dye all of the sneaker, you can block certain areas using masking tape. I wanted to dye them all and I did. And this is the final result.

This is how to tie-dye sneakers.

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I’m going to show you how to make a box pattern using tie dye. This is an example of what you can make. You can see how neat it looks and it’s a great technique to use on shirts and bags and it looks really complicated and it’s actually really easy. So again, it’s a folding technique, so we want to fold our fabric in an accordion way, so back and forth.

And with these accordions that I just did, I pretty much built one set of stripes, so now I want to build the other one to create the grid-looking pattern. So I’m going to fold it into squares and the bigger that I make my squares or I imagine if I don’t make them a square, if I transform them into a rectangle, that means instead of a square in my pattern, I’ll have a rectangle. So I’m going to like pretty much copy what I did in these examples, so you can understand.

So I’m going to fold it into tiny squares always accordion folding to the back and to the front, until I run out of fabric and all I have left is a small square. Because I’m going to dunk it into a dye bath, I’m going to put some rubber bands around it to just keep it in place, because otherwise all these folds would unfold as soon as they touch the dye bath. So this is it. You see that all the lines that form the grids are in here.

The front and the back will get dyed and that will be a square here and in the corner too. If you want to avoid that you could find a square piece of wood or plexi-glass and just put one in the front and the other one in the back, and then just sandwich it using clamps or rubber bands. Then you would be protecting the front and the back, and you would actually have a grid without any full square like I have.

Sometimes I’ll leave it open, because I like the full squares appearing in the pattern, so this is what we are going to do this time. So it’s ready to go. I’m going to dunk it into my dye bath, just made by mixing some dye and dye activator and it’s going to stay in there for about an hour. After that we can remove it and rinse it. This is a simple way of how you can do a box pattern using tie dye.

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One of my favorite techniques using fiber reactive dyes is dyeing using squeeze bottles. This technique really allows you to apply different colors at the same time, so think about it like pretty much painting with dyes, and it can be pretty cool. So I’m going to show you how to prepare the dye solution that will go into the squeeze bottle. For this technique you need to use the dye like in all the other techniques, but also you need to use a dye assistant called urea.

Urea pretty much just helps the dye to remain moist and you’ll see later why it’s important. The proportion of urea that you’ll use is seven tablespoons per cup. So you just adjust it for how big you’re making your squeeze bottles. Mine is pretty small, so it will be a little bit less than a cup, so I’m going to adjust the quantity that I’ll use. So we’ll start by dissolving the urea in water and making sure that it’s pretty dissolved. Sometimes it takes a little bit, but you want to make sure that all of it has been dissolved.

Okay, I think it’s pretty good. And then you’ll add your dye. Again, if you want your color to be lighter you add a little, if you want a color to be darker you add more. I always think it’s a good idea to add a little bit and then correct the color if you want it to be stronger. So I’m going to start with half of a teaspoon. I’m going to add it to my urea water and use my whiskers again to mix it. After it’s all been dissolved you’ll use a funnel to pass it to your squeeze bottle.

This is a part that sometimes gets a little messy, so make sure you’ve protected your table and to say really focused. You place your funnel in the bottle and you’re just going to fill it up. I normally leave a little bit of room, in case I want to correct my color, and want to add a little bit more dye. So after you put it in, you close it, I always like to give it a final stir. Then my favorite way to test the colors, so I don’t waste fabric, is just use plain white paper towels.

They’re the closest as you’ll get to your fabric and then you can see if your color is light or dark. As you can see, I went for a lighter shade. If I wanted it dark I could straight add a little bit of dye into the bottle or dissolve a small quantity again, and then fill up the rest with the more concentrated one. I already made two other colors that are pretty dark. So I like normally to counterbalance darker colors with lighter colors, so I’m going to keep my yellow in this lighter shade. And this is how you prepare the squeeze bottles for tie dyeing.

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One of the techniques that you can use for tie dyeing is called emerging dyeing and that’s the most simple, easy to prepare of the dyeing techniques. It pretty much consists in preparing a dye vat in which you fully submerge the fabric.

I’m going to explain you how to prepare a dye bath using fiber reactive dyes. First you start by picking your color and the color that I picked today is aqua, which will be a really cool bright blue. You’re supplier will normally tell you how much you need to use but I sometimes don’t totally follow the recipe so I like to start with little and then take a look at it and add more if I want the color to be stronger. But yeah, use less if you want a really subtle tones, use a lot if you want really dark colors.

So using my measuring spoon I’m going to start by adding a little bit more than a quarter of a teaspoon to a little bit of water and I’m going to use a whisker to really mix it well. In the meantime, you also want to start soaking the fabric that you already tied and bundled with the pattern that you want to use. As an example, I used some rubber bands and I did a knot. So I’m going to soak it in water. The fibers always need to be wet before any dyeing technique. This just allow the dye to more easily penetrate in the fabric and then you’ll just get the better dyeing result.

While the fabric soaks, we’re going to prepare our next step and that is to prepare the activator solution. For the activator, we’re using soda ash or washing soda. The quantity that I’ll use is a proportion of the water and your supplier will also provide you the recipe for this but just as a general note for a poundof fabric you normally use a gallon of water and for a gallon of water you’ll use five teaspoons of washing soda.

So I’m going to prepare my activator solution. And washing soda really likes to dissolve in hot water so make sure you have hot water available. You really won’t dissolve in cold water so always pre-dissolve it. And I’m going to use the same whisker and that is fine. Nothing bad will happen. And you just want to make sure that it is fully dissolved.

It will look a little cloudy and milky in the beginning but then, once it’s fully dissolved, will look more transparent. Going to let it sit here for a while and I’m going to remove and ring out my fabric that is now fully wet. And I’m going to add all the ingredients to the dye bath. First the dye. Use the whisker too to make sure that it’s really dissolved and then my dye activator. And stir it well to make sure that it’s all mixed together.

And at this point, you’re ready to put your fabric in and just put it making sure that all of it is fully submerged. In the beginning, you might want to help it with your hands or with some tongs or even the whisker because fabrics tend to float and you want it to be totally underneath the water.

After that you just wait for one hour and during this time, this one hour, the dye will just connect with the fiber and fix to it. So after one hour you can rinse it, dry it and wear it and it’s done.

I have an example here of the same colors so you can see how it would look like after this one hour. So this is how this aqua color will look like and it’s totally fixed.

So this is how you do immersion dye bath using fiber reactive dyes.

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I’m going to show you now how to prepare the fabric and how to dye it using the squeeze bottles.

So first you want to prepare what we call the activator solution. And that will just be a solution with washing soda or soda ash. Normally you would mix 9 teaspoons per gallon of water , since I have a little bit less than a gallon of water I’m going to adapt my recipe and that’s what you should do.

Again I’m going to dissolve my washing soda into hot water because it doesn’t like to be dissolved in cold water. So I’m going to add 3 teaspoons because I think I have a third of a gallon. And I’m going to make sure it’s fully dissolved before adding my fabric to it. I’m just like whisking it to make sure it’s fully dissolved. Soda ash or washing soda can be a little tricky and you don’t want to enter your fabric before it’s fully dissolved. I think now it’s good actually.

So I pre-wetted my fabric which is also like bundled for tie dying already. So make sure that you wet it and then you want to put it in the dye activator solution and let it sit from 5-10 minutes. So I’m just going to make sure it’s fully immersed and then I’m going to wait 5 minutes before I take it out.

After 5 minutes your fabric’s soaked all of the activator solution that it needed so you can remove it from the activator solution and just wring the excess out. I’m wringing it out and I’m going to move my dye activator solution aside so I have a nice clean surface to dye.

So then I prepared 3 colors in the squeeze bottles and I’m going to show you how then look. So I have the yellow that is pretty light. And I have a berry color that is actually pretty concentrated so I think will go well with the yellow. And there’s also some green. I really like using the paper towels to test the colors. This is actually really useful too to see how the two colors will blend because just because the two colors look pretty next to each other doesn’t mean the mix of both when you’re putting in the fabric will look pretty so make sure you test your colors before putting them in the fabric side by side or you might end up with really ugly results that you don’t want.

This technique is really cool because it allows you to apply as many colors as you want, at once, in the fabric so you can get really beautiful results. So I tied my fabric into sections and my plan is to dye each section in one color and have them in the middle just mix with each other. Maybe in the middle section I’ll just also mix with them.

So with the squeeze bottles you pretty much just apply the dye directly into the fabric and you can have the control of how much you want to add. So for instance if you like some of the white to appear you can also do that. Otherwise, if you want all the parts that you’re dying to be pretty saturated make sure that you add a lot of dye but also you can work the dye into the fabric with your hands.

So my first yellow section is dyed and I think next to the yellow I’m going to put the green. And maybe in this section I’m actually going to mix the green and the yellow at the same time so you can see that you can apply them both and kind of get this marbled effect. And I’m going to flip it and do the same thing on the other side. So this is my green and yellow marbled. And maybe next to it I’m going to do just green and I think I’ll end up with the berry color.

Again, working the dye into the fabric to make sure that all of the layers got dyed. And I guess the last one I’ll do yellow too.

So at this point you applied all the dye and your fabric will need to rest to fix the dye into the fabric. This process we call the curing process and we normally recommend from 4-24 hours just resting and curing. For the curing process you want your fabric to remain wet so it’s a good idea to just wrap it in a plastic bag or saran wrap and just let it sit. After the curing process, 4 hours, you can just rinse your fabric and the dye should be fixed. And it’s all ready to go.

So this is how you tie dye using squeeze bottles.

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Another variation on dyeing with squeeze bottles is by using a spray bottle instead, and you can get these really cool diverse effects. So once again, you start with your fabric wet, and you’ll soak it into the dye activator solution, which is a solution made with water and washing soda. So I’m going to to soak my fabric for about 5-10 minutes.

In the meantime I’m going to show you how the spray bottle will work. I just put a spray top on to a normal spray bottle. You can even reuse the spray tops from cleaning products and just use that as your spray bottle. Pretty much you’re going to be spraying it directly into the fabric like I’m doing into this paper towel and you see how you get this sprayed look. You can use different colors and you’ll have all these tiny dots and you get really cool effects.

So I’m going to take my fabric out of the soaking solution, wringing it well so it’s not soaking when I put on the table. Spread it out and I’ll just… One thing you want to avoid that I’m actually doing here. You see these big blobs, these are where my squeeze bottle dripped, so it’s always a good idea to use a piece of paper towel right underneath where the spray top is to avoid these big drips. Because all you’re trying to get here is these small dotted surfaces that appear in these lighter areas, although the big blobs kind of look cool, too.

Okay, it’s working much better, so I’m done with my black. Maybe I’ll try some other color now. So I’m just going to move this into a different color. I’m going to spray it a couple of times into the paper towel, just to clean it. If you’re doing this at home, it would probably be a good idea to have different tops for different colors. Okay, it’s coming out blue, so I’m going to spray some blue. As you see, you can get these kind of graffiti-sprayed look that’s very nice. To set it, once again, you would just cover it with a plastic bag and let it cure for 4 to 24 hours. And this is how you dye with a spray bottle using fiber reactive dyes.

Transcript

Tie-dying is an ancient technique that has been used for thousands of years all over the world. It consists of bundling and tying the fabric to create shapes and forms, and that happens because the bundled areas or the tied areas won’t get died, so a resist this happens.

There’s different ways you can make these resists. For instance, you can crease or fold, and that will lead to the creation of more geometric patterns or stripes. Or you can also scrunch and tie, and that will create more organic kind of spirally shapes.

Other things you can do is use buttons or other circular shapes, for instance some chickpeas or marbles, to create these round, circular sections. You put the button in and tie it with a rubber band. There’s really many things you can do. You can use shapes to create resists. You can use clamps or just clothespins.

Another really important thing is choosing the colors. For instance, we all associate tie-dye with really bright colors, but you can also get really beautiful effects with more muted and subtle colors as well.

This is how you tie-dye.

Transcript

There’s many dyes that you can use for tie dyeing and your selection will depend in a number of factors, such as the nature of your fiber.

For instance, if you are dyeing wool or if you’re dyeing silk or cotton. It will it also depend on the nature of your work. For instance, if you’re just trying to have fun with your kids or if you’re trying to dye something that you want to wear and wash a lot of times or even if you’re dyeing something that you plant to sell.

There’s many different dyes. There’s fiber reactive dyes which are the ones that I prefer and that I will be using for these tutorials and they’re pretty much focused for cotton fibers. And then there’s acid dyes that are more suitable for silk fibers. And then there’s Rit dyes that everyone knows and they’re available at any supermarket and they’re really cheap and they’re easy to use. And finally, you can even get color out of natural dyes. For instance, you can extract awesome yellows out of onion skins and you can get really nice pinks from avocado pits and even berries can be used to dye fabric.

And these are just a couple of examples of dyes that you can use for tie dyeing.

Transcript

Here on the table I have all the supplies that you’ll need for tie dyeing.

I have the dyes that are in powder form and they’re the kind of fiber reactive dyes and I also have the dye [inaudible 0:00:07] that you need to make them react and fix to the fiber.

I also have a variety of containers and measuring cups that you’ll use to mix your dye solutions and then do the dyeing as well. A funnel that always comes in handy when you’re trying to pour solutions into smaller containers. And then measuring spoons, measuring cups and whisks to I prepare your dye solutions.

I have some gloves that you’ll use to protect your hands from getting stained but also to protect them from getting sensitive with the dye and the dye chemicals. Finally I have an array of regular rubber bands, clamps that you can find anywhere and shapes. I have two circular shapes brushes and foam brushes and droppers that you can use to make all the effects of tie dyeing.

And this is pretty much all you need to make your tie dye designs.