Tie Die

Earlier this month, I had to try and do some tie dye. The actual tie dye itself went okay, surprisingly (except for two bits of fabric which, instead of having a gradual fading effect from top to bottom, was just a single block of colour) but not a lot else. So, for the benefit of other would-be tie dyers, I shall give a heads up about what not to do (though most of these should be obvious):

This is the result. Isn't it pretty?

 1) Read the instructions well in advance

In my mind I had this idyllic picture of me chucking a couple of rubber bound bits of cloth into a sink, coming back 15 minutes later and having some beautiful patterns. Upon closer inspection of the instructions, I realised that a) it took at least an hour and b) I had to stir it continuosly for 15 minutes, and then keep stiring it regularly for the first 45 minutes. And to do the faded pattern (which didn't even work!), I would have to sit there and hold the fabric for the entire time and slowly pull it out of the water. I feel like I should admit now that I completely ignored the instructions and gave up after 40 minutes.

2) Prepare everything well in advance
I weighed out the salt (another thing I didn't realise until just before I started. You need salt for these things), heated up the water and did all that stuff. I then blindly followed the instructions exactly as they were laid out on the packet. Which should have been fine, except, when I need to add the salt at step 3, I already had wet, dye covered hands. The paper towel I had put the salt on was bad enough to begin with, without the corners dissolves away as I picked it up. I think most of the salt ended up on the bench than in the mixture. I also forgot to put the elastic bands around the fabric until step 3 as well so I had to try and put it on with my gloves messing up the fabric before it even went in to the mixture. (As an added bonus, instead of throwing the fabric into the mixture, I threw my paper towel in. Not helpful)

3) If it was designed to stain fabric, it will probably stain everything else.
This is where the 'die' part of the title starts to make sense. As I was continously stirring the mixture, I kept sloshing it over the sides on to the bench top. My mum spends a lot of time obessively cleaning the kitchen (and the rest of the house) and here I was, staining her beautiful work surface. As soon as I saw a splodge, I would try and mop it up but the dye was far quicker than me. No amount of Mr Muscle and scrubbing would get rid of the faint colour either. My mum really didn't need to use her 'eagle eyes' spotting ability to see the huge blobs of dye everywhere...

4) Did I mention that it stains?
I read enough of the packaging to put on gloves, like it said. However, I didn't think to check the gloves beforehand. I blindly trusted that the gloves were fine as I stuck my hands into the flamingo pink mix. One glove was fine. But, after 15 minutes of continous stirring, where it was basically marinading in the solution, I realised one glove had a tiny hole in it. Apparently skin is quite a bit like cotton when it comes to tie dye, because did a great job of staining my hand as well...

Guess which hand I was wearing the broken glove on...

Even scrubbing at it with a pumice stone didn't get rid of all of it. At the time of writing this, a week and a half afterwards, I still have bright pink nail beds.


If you managed to read through that whole essay, you should now have a good understand of what not to do with your tie dye. Although, if you wanted to redecorate your kitchen, or change the colour of your hands, you might as well just ignore these steps and go for it. The results would be interesting!