Always a festival favourite, the art of tie-dying has made its way into high street fashion as of late. What many don’t realise is how cheap and easy it is to tie-dye in the comfort of your own home. Here is my dummy’s guide (from the ultimate tie-dye dummy) to hitting this trend with minimum expenditure and effort. You’ll need the following: dyes of your choice; elastic bands; rubber gloves; basins for the dye and of course, the clothes you want to jazz up.
Grainne Morrison
Step 1: Prepare Your Dye
This varies depending on the brand you buy but is generally as complex as adding water. I bought my dyes from Wilkinson for about £3 each, in yellow, green and red as you can make so many colours by mixing i.e. if you want purple and blue, mix the green and yellow for the blue – then add red to that mixture to make a purple.
Grainne Morrison
Step 2: Tie your Clothes
It really is as simple as tying your elastic bands around your clothing in whatever pattern you want the dye to develop. As you can see we didn’t use any sort of intricate technique for our items, we just went crazy with the bands. That’s the beauty of tie-dye, the messier the better.
Grainne Morrison
Step 3: Go Crazy
Once again this may vary with the dye you use, so read the instructions. It’s more or less doing whatever you want with your chosen colours, the desired patterns often don’t call for much care to detail so there are really no mistakes in this process. You may have to rinse the clothing after applying the dye or else leave them for 24 hours.
Grainne Morrison
Step 4: Patience is a virtue
This is the trickiest part – as you may have noticed, if it isn’t raining…you’re not in Manchester. We were fortunate on our day of tie dying and were able to dry our garments outside but you may have to allow for them to dry inside your (probably damp) house. Remember to take care when washing them for the first few times, as the colours may bleed.
There you have it, cheap and cheerful clothes that are absolutely tie dye for. Yes, I did just go there.
