Do you wear tie-dyed shirts? How do you make them?!
Question: Use fiber reactive dye for tie-dyeing. Do not use all-purpose dye!
For pictures of successful tie dyeing--essential in helping you decide what you want to create--see my Gallery and some of the many beautiful commercial tie dyeing sites on my Links to other Galleries page.
Getting Started
Study the How to Dye basic recipe first. Make sure you have all the chemicals and supplies you need....Procion MX dyes, urea, sodium carbonate, thin rubber or plastic gloves, measuring cups and spoons, squirt bottles to put the dye solution into for application, rubber bands, a dust mask for measuring out dyes, and a bucket for pre-soaking the fabric in sodium carbonate solution. If you don't have everything you need, you can still tie today, and be ready to dye when you get the rest of your equipment! Be sure to pre-wash all clothing to remove invisible finishes that can prevent the dye from getting to the fabric.
Why Tie?
The whole point of tie dyeing is to prevent the dye from reaching the fabric evenly. Any place that the dye can't reach will stay white, or a lighter color, of course. The gradations of color from intense to light can be beautiful. You can accomplish this by folding the fabric, tieing it with string, using rubber bands, etc.
Another reason to tie is that it makes each garment of piece of cloth a small, neat bundle--much easier to handle if you have a lot to do. If you don't tie, but just apply the dye directly, you need more space and can do fewer garments or pieces of fabric at a time.
Ways to Tie
Fold a piece of clothing in vertical pleats, and you'll end up with horizontal stripes. Horizontal pleats result in vertical stripes (more slimming, you know). Diagonal pleats make a nice effect. Stitch a loose basting stitch in any shape you like, then pull the threads tight for another form of tie-dyeing that can have really cool results. For concentric circles, grab the cloth where you want the center to be, and pull, until you've more or less made a long tube of the garment, then apply rubber bands at intervals along the fabric. I also like the "scrunch" pattern, made by crumpling the fabric very evenly, so that ultimately it makes a nice flat disk when held with rubber bands.
For the now-traditional spiral, see the FAQ, How do you tie-dye a spiral pattern?: you lay the garment on a flat smooth surface, smooth out all the wrinkles, then make a small pleat right across where you want the center to be. Grab the very center of that pleat with a clothes pin, and begin to twist. As you twist, pleats appear farther and farther away from the center; as these pleats get too large, split the pleats with your hands, keeping each fold the same height above the table, no more than one to two inches in height.
You should not really need pictures to do the above, because it is all trial and error, anyway. You can't know what works best for you until you try it. However, if you want to see pictures of how to do the ties, check out PROchem's illustrations of tie dye folds, actual photos of a tied spiral at Real Tie Dye, and Rit?'s Virtual spiral (though you'll find the dyeing process much easier if you use fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX, instead of "all-purpose" dye such as Rit?, which requires that you hold the disk of fabric partially submerged in boiling water for a long time). A more advanced technique for tying is illustrated at The Kind Dyes. Mike Fowler's DVD The Art of Tie-Dye (illustrated at left) shows in great detail how to tie a number of different tie-dye folds, as do True Tie Dye's Tom Rolofson's wonderful "Learn How to Tie Dye" series of DVDs (see Amazon affiliate links at right side of page).
Color Mixing
You can make all the colors you need by mixing lemon yellow, fuchsia, and turquoise. You should probably get black, too (I prefer Dharma's New Black), as it intensifies the other colors wonderfully by contrast, and it's hard to mix yourself.
Simple rules:
a lot of fuchsia and a little yellow make red
red and yellow make orange
yellow and turquoise* make green
a lot of turquoise* plus a little fuchsia makes blue
turquoise* plus fuchsia makes purple
*(remember to double the amounts of turquoise as compared to other colors)
Color Choice
The two most obvious differences between a wonderful tie-dye and a so-so one are color choice and color saturation. You'll find that you really have to work to squirt enough dye into the folds to avoid a large amount of white on the finished garment. In choosing colors to place adjacent to each other, remember the color wheel. Do not place "opposite" colors next to each other, such as red near green, or blue near orange, or yellow near purple: the results would be a muddy mess. If you really like bright colors, as I do, avoid placing a color with red mixed *in* it, such as purple, near green.
A good basic rule is to apply two colors next to each other only if they appear next to each other in the following short list:
fuchsia...yellow...turquoise...purple....
...or, for a more detailed color scheme, choose adjacent colors from the following expanded list:
fuchsia... red... orange... yellow... green... turquoise... blue... purple...fuschia
It really does help to place fuchsia between red and purple.
For eye-popping color contrasts, you can avoid muddy mixtures of colors by adding a thickener such as sodium alginate to your dye mixtures; applying contrasting colors to the two sides of your bundled folded fabric will then result in alternating stripes.
Ingredients: appropriate cloth or clothing; water; urea (optional); Procion MX dyes or other fiber reactive dyes; sodium carbonate (soda ash or "pH Up"). Rubber bands, synthetic sinew, or dental floss for tying (optional). Plastic bottles with which to hold the dye (4 to 8 ounces [125 to 250 ml] is a good size).
Instructions:
Choose the right fabric, first. Fabrics that are at least 80% cellulose fiber--cotton, rayon, linen, tencel, or hemp-- are best for dyeing. 100% is better. 50% cotton/50% polyester makes nice pastels. Cotton clothing is often sewn with non-cotton thread, which stays white, but this is not usually a problem. Avoid 100% polyester or nylon. Silk is the only protein (animal) fiber that can be dyed with this recipe.
Next, wash your fabric. This can be done days in advance. Unwashed fabric may not dye well.
Next, if you're planning to tie-dye, tie the dry garments in advance. It's easiest that way. (Tying wet garments that contain soda ash is a total pain, because you should always wear gloves when handling soda ash, but gloves get caught in the string or rubber bands; it's okay to moisten the fabric with plain water to tie, and then soak in soda ash.) See the next page for more information on tieing.
Mixing the dyes may be done up to one week in advance. (Longer storage requires refrigeration.)
Dissolve urea in water....1 tablespoon (15 ml) per cup (250 ml). Urea is harmless, easy to measure, and it dissolves readily--a chemist's favorite. Make enough at one time for every color you're going to prepare. (Urea may be omitted in low water immersion dyeing.)
Next, dissolve dye in urea solution. The best dye to use on cotton is a good fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX, Sabracron F, or Drimarene K (buy from one of the companies listed at Sources for Supplies). (Do not use all-purpose dye such as Rit? brand dye in this type of dyeing!) Use about 4 teaspoons of dye per cup...unless the dye is or contains turquoise MX-G, in which case you should double the amount for similar brightness, or black, in which case you must use 2 to 4 times as much. If you are mixing primaries to make other shades, note that the powder dissolves much more easily after it's been mixed in dry form.
Put the dye solutions into squirt or spray bottles for applying the dye - buy plastic bottles specifically for this purpose.
Be careful when you measure out the dye...leave the jars open as short a time as possible, and use a face mask. Don't breathe dye! The stuff isn't very toxic, but you can become sensitized to it, which would put an end forever to your dyeing.
Pre-soaking the fabric. Just before dyeing, pre-soak the fabric for fifteen minutes to one hour in a solution of sodium carbonate, mixed one cup per gallon of water. This stuff is also known as soda ash, and is similar to, but three times as strong as, washing soda. The kind sold for swimming pools - one brand is "pH Up" - is excellent. (Do not use sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda!)
Applying the dye. I like to lay the fabric nearly flat, or pleated loosely, and drip with squeeze bottles directly onto the fabric, or spray it on with a spray bottle. This part is easy and fun, but always more tiring than I expect. Be sure to wear gloves! The sodium carbonate is slightly caustic and must be washed or at least wiped off of your skin immediately after contact. (Not to mention that the dyes themselves look very odd on your hands for a couple of days afterwards--while a special hand cleaner, ReDuRan, is sold for cleaning up after dyes, it really doesn't work as well as you'd like, so you end up waiting two or three days to look normal again. Also, no fabric dye has been fully tested for safety when spilled on the skin.)
Reaction time. Make sure that the fabric stays wet, for the reaction to take place, no less than two hours, but preferably eight to twenty-four hours. The amount of time required depends on the temperature, which should be at least 70°F (21°C). In our humid climate here, we just leave the clothing outside, trusting the urea, a humectant, to keep our fabric sufficently damp, but in drier climates you may need to use plastic wrap or plastic bags.
Wash the clothing. Many dyers prefer to use Synthrapol detergent in the wash water, to help prevent dyes from mixing in undesired ways. You still need to isolate very light colors (especially yellow/orange); the problem with transfer of unreacted dye from dark to light regions is reduced by waiting a full day or more before washing out, as dye which has not reacted with the fabric will tend to react with the water, if given enough time. I like to dump the dyed items directly into the washer without rinsing first, but many prefer to rinse by hand before machine-washing. I wash first in cold, once, then twice in the hottest water available, using Synthrapol in each wash, and end by double-rinsing. You may need to wash the clothes separately the first few wearings, but pretty soon they are 100% colorfast and safe to wash with anything, in my experience.
Heat setting is NOT necessary with Procion MX dyes. The only reason to use a hot water wash is to rid the cloth of the last bits of unreacted dye. It is important to use cold water before using hot water, as hot water may, in the presence of the sodium carbonate, encourage some excess dye to become a little too closely associated with the fabric, resulting in dye that gradually rinses out over the course of many washings.
Hope I helped :)
Answers: Use fiber reactive dye for tie-dyeing. Do not use all-purpose dye!
For pictures of successful tie dyeing--essential in helping you decide what you want to create--see my Gallery and some of the many beautiful commercial tie dyeing sites on my Links to other Galleries page.
Getting Started
Study the How to Dye basic recipe first. Make sure you have all the chemicals and supplies you need....Procion MX dyes, urea, sodium carbonate, thin rubber or plastic gloves, measuring cups and spoons, squirt bottles to put the dye solution into for application, rubber bands, a dust mask for measuring out dyes, and a bucket for pre-soaking the fabric in sodium carbonate solution. If you don't have everything you need, you can still tie today, and be ready to dye when you get the rest of your equipment! Be sure to pre-wash all clothing to remove invisible finishes that can prevent the dye from getting to the fabric.
Why Tie?
The whole point of tie dyeing is to prevent the dye from reaching the fabric evenly. Any place that the dye can't reach will stay white, or a lighter color, of course. The gradations of color from intense to light can be beautiful. You can accomplish this by folding the fabric, tieing it with string, using rubber bands, etc.
Another reason to tie is that it makes each garment of piece of cloth a small, neat bundle--much easier to handle if you have a lot to do. If you don't tie, but just apply the dye directly, you need more space and can do fewer garments or pieces of fabric at a time.
Ways to Tie
Fold a piece of clothing in vertical pleats, and you'll end up with horizontal stripes. Horizontal pleats result in vertical stripes (more slimming, you know). Diagonal pleats make a nice effect. Stitch a loose basting stitch in any shape you like, then pull the threads tight for another form of tie-dyeing that can have really cool results. For concentric circles, grab the cloth where you want the center to be, and pull, until you've more or less made a long tube of the garment, then apply rubber bands at intervals along the fabric. I also like the "scrunch" pattern, made by crumpling the fabric very evenly, so that ultimately it makes a nice flat disk when held with rubber bands.
For the now-traditional spiral, see the FAQ, How do you tie-dye a spiral pattern?: you lay the garment on a flat smooth surface, smooth out all the wrinkles, then make a small pleat right across where you want the center to be. Grab the very center of that pleat with a clothes pin, and begin to twist. As you twist, pleats appear farther and farther away from the center; as these pleats get too large, split the pleats with your hands, keeping each fold the same height above the table, no more than one to two inches in height.
You should not really need pictures to do the above, because it is all trial and error, anyway. You can't know what works best for you until you try it. However, if you want to see pictures of how to do the ties, check out PROchem's illustrations of tie dye folds, actual photos of a tied spiral at Real Tie Dye, and Rit?'s Virtual spiral (though you'll find the dyeing process much easier if you use fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX, instead of "all-purpose" dye such as Rit?, which requires that you hold the disk of fabric partially submerged in boiling water for a long time). A more advanced technique for tying is illustrated at The Kind Dyes. Mike Fowler's DVD The Art of Tie-Dye (illustrated at left) shows in great detail how to tie a number of different tie-dye folds, as do True Tie Dye's Tom Rolofson's wonderful "Learn How to Tie Dye" series of DVDs (see Amazon affiliate links at right side of page).
Color Mixing
You can make all the colors you need by mixing lemon yellow, fuchsia, and turquoise. You should probably get black, too (I prefer Dharma's New Black), as it intensifies the other colors wonderfully by contrast, and it's hard to mix yourself.
Simple rules:
a lot of fuchsia and a little yellow make red
red and yellow make orange
yellow and turquoise* make green
a lot of turquoise* plus a little fuchsia makes blue
turquoise* plus fuchsia makes purple
*(remember to double the amounts of turquoise as compared to other colors)
Color Choice
The two most obvious differences between a wonderful tie-dye and a so-so one are color choice and color saturation. You'll find that you really have to work to squirt enough dye into the folds to avoid a large amount of white on the finished garment. In choosing colors to place adjacent to each other, remember the color wheel. Do not place "opposite" colors next to each other, such as red near green, or blue near orange, or yellow near purple: the results would be a muddy mess. If you really like bright colors, as I do, avoid placing a color with red mixed *in* it, such as purple, near green.
A good basic rule is to apply two colors next to each other only if they appear next to each other in the following short list:
fuchsia...yellow...turquoise...purple....
...or, for a more detailed color scheme, choose adjacent colors from the following expanded list:
fuchsia... red... orange... yellow... green... turquoise... blue... purple...fuschia
It really does help to place fuchsia between red and purple.
For eye-popping color contrasts, you can avoid muddy mixtures of colors by adding a thickener such as sodium alginate to your dye mixtures; applying contrasting colors to the two sides of your bundled folded fabric will then result in alternating stripes.
Ingredients: appropriate cloth or clothing; water; urea (optional); Procion MX dyes or other fiber reactive dyes; sodium carbonate (soda ash or "pH Up"). Rubber bands, synthetic sinew, or dental floss for tying (optional). Plastic bottles with which to hold the dye (4 to 8 ounces [125 to 250 ml] is a good size).
Instructions:
Choose the right fabric, first. Fabrics that are at least 80% cellulose fiber--cotton, rayon, linen, tencel, or hemp-- are best for dyeing. 100% is better. 50% cotton/50% polyester makes nice pastels. Cotton clothing is often sewn with non-cotton thread, which stays white, but this is not usually a problem. Avoid 100% polyester or nylon. Silk is the only protein (animal) fiber that can be dyed with this recipe.
Next, wash your fabric. This can be done days in advance. Unwashed fabric may not dye well.
Next, if you're planning to tie-dye, tie the dry garments in advance. It's easiest that way. (Tying wet garments that contain soda ash is a total pain, because you should always wear gloves when handling soda ash, but gloves get caught in the string or rubber bands; it's okay to moisten the fabric with plain water to tie, and then soak in soda ash.) See the next page for more information on tieing.
Mixing the dyes may be done up to one week in advance. (Longer storage requires refrigeration.)
Dissolve urea in water....1 tablespoon (15 ml) per cup (250 ml). Urea is harmless, easy to measure, and it dissolves readily--a chemist's favorite. Make enough at one time for every color you're going to prepare. (Urea may be omitted in low water immersion dyeing.)
Next, dissolve dye in urea solution. The best dye to use on cotton is a good fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX, Sabracron F, or Drimarene K (buy from one of the companies listed at Sources for Supplies). (Do not use all-purpose dye such as Rit? brand dye in this type of dyeing!) Use about 4 teaspoons of dye per cup...unless the dye is or contains turquoise MX-G, in which case you should double the amount for similar brightness, or black, in which case you must use 2 to 4 times as much. If you are mixing primaries to make other shades, note that the powder dissolves much more easily after it's been mixed in dry form.
Put the dye solutions into squirt or spray bottles for applying the dye - buy plastic bottles specifically for this purpose.
Be careful when you measure out the dye...leave the jars open as short a time as possible, and use a face mask. Don't breathe dye! The stuff isn't very toxic, but you can become sensitized to it, which would put an end forever to your dyeing.
Pre-soaking the fabric. Just before dyeing, pre-soak the fabric for fifteen minutes to one hour in a solution of sodium carbonate, mixed one cup per gallon of water. This stuff is also known as soda ash, and is similar to, but three times as strong as, washing soda. The kind sold for swimming pools - one brand is "pH Up" - is excellent. (Do not use sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda!)
Applying the dye. I like to lay the fabric nearly flat, or pleated loosely, and drip with squeeze bottles directly onto the fabric, or spray it on with a spray bottle. This part is easy and fun, but always more tiring than I expect. Be sure to wear gloves! The sodium carbonate is slightly caustic and must be washed or at least wiped off of your skin immediately after contact. (Not to mention that the dyes themselves look very odd on your hands for a couple of days afterwards--while a special hand cleaner, ReDuRan, is sold for cleaning up after dyes, it really doesn't work as well as you'd like, so you end up waiting two or three days to look normal again. Also, no fabric dye has been fully tested for safety when spilled on the skin.)
Reaction time. Make sure that the fabric stays wet, for the reaction to take place, no less than two hours, but preferably eight to twenty-four hours. The amount of time required depends on the temperature, which should be at least 70°F (21°C). In our humid climate here, we just leave the clothing outside, trusting the urea, a humectant, to keep our fabric sufficently damp, but in drier climates you may need to use plastic wrap or plastic bags.
Wash the clothing. Many dyers prefer to use Synthrapol detergent in the wash water, to help prevent dyes from mixing in undesired ways. You still need to isolate very light colors (especially yellow/orange); the problem with transfer of unreacted dye from dark to light regions is reduced by waiting a full day or more before washing out, as dye which has not reacted with the fabric will tend to react with the water, if given enough time. I like to dump the dyed items directly into the washer without rinsing first, but many prefer to rinse by hand before machine-washing. I wash first in cold, once, then twice in the hottest water available, using Synthrapol in each wash, and end by double-rinsing. You may need to wash the clothes separately the first few wearings, but pretty soon they are 100% colorfast and safe to wash with anything, in my experience.
Heat setting is NOT necessary with Procion MX dyes. The only reason to use a hot water wash is to rid the cloth of the last bits of unreacted dye. It is important to use cold water before using hot water, as hot water may, in the presence of the sodium carbonate, encourage some excess dye to become a little too closely associated with the fabric, resulting in dye that gradually rinses out over the course of many washings.
Hope I helped :)
I haven't wore one since 5th grade. I don't remember exactly how we made them. I remember doing it outside.
You can buy a tie-dye kit.
Hippies whear tie die, You scrunch up a shirt, put rubber bands on it, then put it in die. Viola! Tie die shirt, have fun.
Get a tie dye kit :-)
yeah I wear them, you can make them by purchasing a kit from most major craft store chains like a.c. moore or michaels
I don't wear them.
I don't wear tye dyed shirts anymore.
i did when i was like 5. but now i think you can buy a kit at like michael's or beverly's or something.
Try going to an arts-and-crafts store...they have tye dye kits there...
And yeah...kids still wear tye dye...their fun...and they make great team jersey's/warmups...
tie yourself up and get lowered in a vat of bleach
I have one I wear somtimes..I never made one though
You can wear tie-dye shirts if you really like them. They are kind of like Hippie shirts for peace. They sell them in any craft store like in Michael's, or A.C. Moore.
u get a white shirt
then u put a bunch a rubber bands on it
put it in some dye than ta da ur done
No,I always thought they were kind of dumb.
take a white shirt and some tyedye dye(you can buy at the store). scrunch up parts of it into rubber bands and let it soak in the dye. or just buy a tyedye kit at a craft store!
We made some in 10th grade for chemistry, I still have mine. dont wear it too often, But I like to keep it. You scrunch up the shirt and put rubber bands Tightly all over, the more rubber bands the cooler itll look. Then dip t in the dyes u want in it.... Or buy a tie dye kit for like under 20 bucks at ur local store.. Walmart has them in the craft section.
We had them back in the 70's in oz, but the dye was like garbage and the wax to iron of the druggo patterns of hippies never took off as a fad, cause it just looks horrid, the wax smells really foul when you iron it out after the dye has set and been fixed, why who wants one, St Vinnies cant give them away, they look putrid, say, you dont want one? Ooops!
Um ok, well, about tie dying shirts, well first you, are forget it, gotta sort my sock draw, see ya later, I am blond? LMAO
Well, I used to wear ty-dyed shirts in the 70's......you just buy some clothing dye..........pour it in the washer.......rubberband your t shirts..........ty die each one in separate dye.....and if you want to add a few colors.......wait until the first rinses...and then start again.....u don't have to do a full wash....you can let it wash and rotate, spin, & rinse.
I don't wear them, but I've made them before. You buy diff colors of fabric dye, have a diff bucket for ea color, wad up diff areas of the shirt, put a tight rubber band on ea section, then dip in the diff dyes. Let the shirt dry over night, than take the rubber bands off. If it's still a liile wet where the rubber band was, let dry overnight. Wash in cold water.
Yes I used to wear them.
First you buy some shirt coloring.
Next you get a rubber band and tie a section right in the middle of the shirt and tie more going out from the middle.
Then you dip it in the colors you like by the sections you tied in your shirt with the rubber bands.
Next you let it dry, but don't take off the rubber bands yet and when y ou dry it let it dry in the sun.
Lastly when the shirt is done you can take off the rubber bands and wear it!
ENJOY!
Thanks,
Yahoo User
(Please choose me for best answer, I tried really hard.)
I have a couple that I wear sometimes, usually for working out or lounging about the house.
It's been awhile since I dyed them, but what you do is buy fabric dye & prepare it with dissolved soda ash in buckets or something for dying. Then you tie up the shirt with rubber bands so that it is in sections (the way you do this depends on what patterns you want on the shirt). After you dip different sections into different dyes, you rinse it MANY TIMES so that it won't bleed onto your other clothes. I can't remember whether you use hot or cold water, though.
This website will give you good instructions. Have a good time! http://www.stanford.edu/~sipma/tiedyeins...
i don't wear them but you usually wrap it up in a ball and put rubber bands around it to make it stay like a ball and put dyes on it, then scrunch it up a different way and put on more dye until none of the original color shows
I love tie die! I do it all the time.
First of all get some marbles, squash balls, little rocks or anything that will make a great shape and tie them to the inside of the shirt individually. You can also just simply tie little knots if you can't find any thing to make patterns with. Then using the colour you want to use soak it in a bucket according to colour instuctions. After the garment has been soaking for long enough rinse it and start unravelling the pieces that have been tied into the garment. Hang to dry, then put through the rinse cycle of the machine. PERFECT!
It is up to you what sort of shapes and how big they are! Have fun.
I also done this method for my husbands jeans using bleach instead of colour to make an acid wash effect, as we were going to an 80's retro party! They looked fantastic!
You can also gather the garment up and wrap with string to get a streaky effect, which looks awesome.
I'm a child of the sixties..of coarse I do!!