Tie-Dye Procedure

In Short:

Have ready:
• Fabric, washed and dried, dampen just before folding
• Rubber bands, 3 to 30 for each piece
• Dye, dissolved and cooled down
• Soda ash, dissolved
• Table, covered with white plastic-backed paper tablecloth
• Cake ("cooling') racks or other work surface
• A large tray to contain spills makes work easier
• Paper towels, old cloth towel and dishpan with warm water
• Containers for keeping dyed fabric damp (explained below)
• Vinyl or latex gloves, safety glasses and Japanese (pointed) chopstick

Tie Dye Steps
1. Folding (10-15 minutes):
   Fold (or form) the damp piece of fabric into the shape you want, fix with rubber bands.
2. Soaking (at least 20 minutes but hardly any work or attention):
   Put the folded piece in Soda Ash (Na₂CO₃) solution and let it soak for at least twenty minutes, a day or two is fine too. When children are tie-dyeing, the soda ash parts should be handled by and adult.
3. Dyeing (30-60 minutes for a T-shirt):
   Put on gloves and safety glasses and wring as much soda ash solution as possible from the piece; put on work surface and apply dye. Turn piece over when one side is ready, continue.
4. Bonding (1 day of rest):
   Cover airtight, it should stay damp, and let the piece rest for a day to allow the cotton fibers to absorb the dye.
5. Rinsing and washing (3 days):
   Put on gloves and rinse piece under running water till water runs kind of clear, wash and air-dry several times to clear out unabsorbed dye.

Materials

Dissolve Soda Ash (Na₂CO₃) according to package instructions. Wear gloves and safety glasses. Don't get it in your eyes! The soaking in soda ash is supposed to roughen up the cotton fibers, make them more receptive for dye; but don't take this to mean that spills will wash out easily from your unsoaked clothes.
I think the Soda Ash solution will keep for years if you're able to keep dirt and bugs out.

Cover your work table with a white, plastic-backed paper tablecloth ("Sensations.") Have paper towels ready. Put a dishpan with warm water within easy reach, to rinse your chopstick and gloved fingers in between colors; use old towel to dry hands and chopstick.
In my early days of tie-dyeing, I had the piece I was working on lying on an upside-down sandbox sieve in an old cake pan; now I have a collection of (cake) cooling racks, and an old keyboard drawer under it to catch spills and dye overflow.
When you're done with one side, put another rack on top and turn the sandwiched thing over.

I use Jacquard Procion MX dye that I buy at my local art shop. A beginner's tie-dye set is nice, but the $2 squeeze bottles from my local art shop allow better control.
Always wear a fitting dust mask and latex or vinyl gloves when dissolving dye. It might cause headaches.
Jacquard suggests 1 teaspoon of dye for 4 fl. oz. water: I follow that except that for Lemon Yellow I use 2 tsp for 4 oz water, and for Turquoise 1½ tsp.; don't use too much for colors like Golden Yellow, it might turn too much to orange.
Put dye powder in paper or foam cup, add warm to hot water, carefully mix with wooden stirrers.
Let dye solution cool down before applying. Warm air might force dye out of the squeeze bottle you're working with at the wrong moment.
Use freshly made dye. After a few weeks it colors will not be so bright anymore. View example

After dyeing, the fabric should stay damp for a day or so to allow the bonding of the dye to the cotton fibers. When I started out tie-dyeing I used plastic shopping bags, but as I always put on too much dye, the lighter colors drowned in the puddle of mixed dye at the bottom of the bag, which sometimes soaked into much of the piece.
A bed of tissue helped a little, a bed of mesh like for mosquito screens was better, but later I found more sturdy plastic mesh sheets at a hobby shop (for needlework?) that I put on a layer of marbles in plastic food containers.

Patterns

Spirals, the traditional tie-dye pattern

I still cannot visualize how it works, but I have seen a spiral come out many times, and it usually turns out better than you would think, don't spend too much time on folding neatly.
To create a spiral:
Lay the damp T-shirt down on an uncovered table (no tablecloth), the back of the shirt on top; pick up between thumb and index finger about an inch of fabric in the center (between the bottom ends of the sleeves) and start turning the shirt around that center; try to fashion nice, regular folds. If all is well, you'll end up with something shaped like a loaded pizza; bind with a few rubber bands over the center to hold everyting in place: now it will look like your pizza is in six or eight (or ten) slices. (When the pleats are more narrow, the pizza will be larger but thinner.)
Put the pizza of cloth on a cake rack or a piece of mesh and apply dye, different colors for the slices; I think squeeze bottles work best, check with a Japanese chopstick to see if the dye penetrates about halfway; then turn over on another cake rack (lay it on top and turn sandwich over) and apply dye to this side, same colors for the slices on top and bottom. Don't put too much dye in the center, just one color.
You can (of course) choose another center for your spiral, here's one centered over the heart (if it's in the right place.) This excentric-spiral shirt is another example of the pastellish colors of stain-resistant fabric.

Folding

Folding is easiest with damp fabric; but this means you have to proceed within a few hours to the next step.
Folding in pleats, like a harmonica, is recommended.

You can of course pleat by hand, but I put a thin aluminum bar (1/16x1-1/2x48) on the damp fabric, fold over, pull out the bar and put it on top, fold again and again, two bars makes it even easier. Bind finished snake with rubber bands at regular intervals.
You could also roll up your piece of fabric, from the top or bottom, from the sides, even folded double, rolling to the middle for possibly interesting results: endless possiblities, life is too short.
I prefer pleating because I can see how far the dye has penetrated; freeform bunching also does not allow that, but it might come out very nice.

Stripes, and Diagonals are stripes too.

Pleat according to instructions above; for diagonals make pleats (lay aluminum bar) from shoulder to opposite bottom of shirt, fix with rubber bands at regular intervals. Put the bound tube of fabric on a cake rack.

For stripes in two colors there are two methods that give about the same result:

1. roll or fold pleated piece together, bind with a few rubber bands, then dye the top in one color, turn over and dye the other side in the other color (darkest color first, so it will not leak down in the bonding),
or
2. put aluminum foil between the coils of the bound tube ("snake") on the cake rack (so they don't touch and blend) and color the segments between the rubber bands in different colors.
Pictures of the two methods

Dyeing stripes in more than two colors can be done as a snake - or roll up to pizza shape and color wedges, that's how I process my handkerchiefs: surprising, isn't it?
For multicolor snake calculate before soaking how many segments you need for the colors you want to use and the order in which to apply them (not all colors go together well) and how many times to run your sequence. I usually write out a complicated sequence, for instance these double, mirrored rainbows:
Fuchsia - Scarlet - Orange - Golden Yellow - Lemon Yellow - Green - Turquoise - Medium Blue - Lilac - Medium Blue - Turquoise - Green - Lemon Yellow - Golden Yellow - Orange - Scarlet - Fuchsia (17 segments).

The shirt on the left has the color sequence:
Lemon Yellow - Green - Turquoise - Lilac - Turquoise - Green - Lemon Yellow - Golden Yellow - Lemon Yellow - Green - Turquoise - Lilac - Turquoise - Green - Lemon Yellow - Golden Yellow - Lemon Yellow - Green - Turquoise - Lilac - Turquoise - Green - Lemon Yellow (23 segments).

The shirt is also an example of leaving areas undyed, what I'll call White as A Color, but as you see it's hard for me to do. These handkerchiefs are a little better: (½-inch pleats, roll up tube to minipizza shape, make slices with rubbber bands, color slices.)

Other Possibilities

As I said before, the possibilities are endless. There are so many ways to fold or form the fabric, so many patterns for applying dye. Writing these instructions I got to thinking about the folding double at the middle and then rolling up from the outside: the diminishing color intensity sounds pretty interesting. It's always exciting to see how things turned out when you snip off the rubber bands and unfold your creashion at the sink; but not every piece comes out nice, there are disappointments.
You could dye the tops and bottoms of pizza slices in different colors, when you choose colors that go together well,
Something else I've also not tried yet but that looks interesting too is to put fabric around items like spice jars or marbles, maybe even larger bottles, bind around and/or behind it and apply various colors.

In batik, wax is melted on part of the fabric to keep dye out in places; later, the wax is removed by scraping and boiling in water; sometimes wax is applied again in another pattern. My stop-sign shirt is a very simple example. (The dots were dripped on later, I had a plastic sheet inside the shirt to keep front and back separate, so there would be no dye flowing in between; covered on table with clingwrap for bonding; actually, I don't really like the dots pattern.)
Cracks in the wax that allow some dye through may give nice "craquelé" tracks.

Colors

Lemon yellow and turquoise flow together to a nice green, but compostite colors often mix to an unpleasant brown. I didn't like the way the standard tie-dye blue and red (turquoise and fuchsia) mixed, actually didn't mix; the owner of my local art shop told me that scarlet combines with turquoise to a nicer color than fuchsia.
I don't mix dye to get other colors, I like Jacquard's colors better.
All together, I use 8-12 oz. dye solution for an adult T-shirt (little white).

Various

I use a (pointed) Japanese chopstick to check if dye went halfway into the folds.

Long sleeves are too much of a hassle for beginners.

Spills on skin will wear off in a few days, but may not be healthy.

Be very alert when tie-dyeing with children. One day my son took off his safety glasses and started rubbing his eyes before I could stop him; we were very lucky that his fingertips were clean.

Not all tie-dye projects come out nice or as expected. I hope these guidelines will reduce disappointments by pointing out a reasonable chance of success with a few designs. Please feel free to experiment and follow your own ideas.

Play a good Youngbloods album while you're coloring - or any other time. It will make you feel good.

Marco Schuffelen

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