DIY Tie Dye – The Quarantine Trend

Hey friends!!! I thought I would make a little blog post about what I did for my DIY tie dye! I posted it this morning on my stories and had a bunch of questions since I know a lot of places are sold out of things since this is the major trend right now. Hopefully this post can help you! I did a bunch of research before doing mine. I happen to like the crumple trend the best but there are tons of different techniques out there for different kinds of tie dye looks!

First things first! Supplies!

This was definitely the most tricky part because if you’re on social media or on-line shopping at all, you know that the tie dye trend is IN and finding supplies can be tricky but I got a little creative and shopped around a bit. I will tag everything that I bought, but honestly any clothing that is mostly cotton blend is the best for tie dye. Just remember that since they are mostly cotton, they will shrink a significant amount in the dryer! And you will have to put them in the dryer eventually so the tie dye can set before you wear them. The more cotton, the easier the dye will pick up and stay. I decided to gather bike shorts and sweatshirts so I could make some cute tie dye sets, as well as some regular t-shirts, short cropped tees, tank tops, tube tops, and socks. These all picked up the color great and they were all majorly in stock!! I also got my tie dye kit from Michaels. I originally ordered from Amazon however they were going to be out of stock until a couple months down the road, so Michaels came pretty quickly! Also, depending on the tie dye kit you purchase, you will need to gather plastic sheets to protect your surface, gloves to make sure you don’t get dye on your hands (please be mindful during this time of taking gloves from people who really need them, my tie dye kit came with gloves inside the package), rubber bands, and bags to let the tie dyed products sit in after dying them.

After gathering all my supplies, I washed all of the white clothing in the washing machine with detergent and dried them before tie-dying. A lot of people said that there’s sometimes some residual chemicals or things of that nature on the clothing before you wash it which can prevent some of the dye from completely picking up and saturating the fabric.

Dying your clothes!

So first things first, you have to get your articles of clothing damp. I did color schemes together so that I wouldn’t mix colors and also so the clothes wouldn’t dry before I could dye them. So I grouped together a few items, got them damp, then mixed up the dye according to the packaging. I wish I had taken more pictures during the process but completely forgot. For reference, I used the crumple technique for a majority of the items. If you look up tie dye techniques, there’s a million different ways you can do it! It’s art, just have fun! I tied a few rubber bands around each one to make sure they stayed together when you flip and do the back of your shirts.

When you’re dying them, it’s okay to get it really saturated! The inside parts that are crumpled up will stay white so you can make sure to get the parts that you can see really well. Once you’ve dyed those pieces, put them in a sealed bag and let them sit for 24 hours. A lot of people say you can wait 6-8 hours, however, if you want the color to last longer and be more vibrant, it is recommended that you wait 24-48 hours. I waited for 24 hours before rinsing.

Rinsing!

Okay, I would say this is the mossttt important step. The reason being that I’ve read you can totally mess up your entire tie dye project if you do this step wrong. You want to make sure that after 24 hours, you take your clothing out of the bags (do alike colors at the same time) and rinse in cold water until the water runs clear! You can take off the rubber bands and just keep rinsing and rinsing. Some of them feel likes tons and tons of dye are coming out but that’s okay! Just make sure you rinse until the water is completely clear. I’ve read that if you forget this step or don’t fully follow through, then when you put them in the wash, they will bleed and completely lose the design that you had beforehand.

Washing!

I looked at a million different sites about how to wash your tie dye, however, what I did and what a majority of people recommended was the same. Right after I finished rinsing out my clothes, I popped alike tie dye colors into the washing machine on small loads with a little bit of detergent and warm water. Not cold and not hot, warm. Make sure that this initial wash is just with your tie dye clothes and with the same colors in there just in case the colors continue to bleed a little. After they are washed, put them in the dryer on high heat. Since there aren’t too many articles of clothing this shouldn’t take long.

And voila! Your own DIY Tie Dye sets at home!! Super cute, affordable and fun! These sets are selling for pretty high price points at boutiques right now and this is a great way to get the same (or cuter) look with more bang for your buck!