Tie Dye

Based on Tie Dye by Gertie
So I managed to bag myself 20 white babygrows, some were newborn, some were 0-3 months. Most of them were colourful already, or had some kind of pattern on them but 8 of them were completely plain and I decided I would like to try and tie dye them myself to brighten them up. Dying them one colour would have left me with a limited amount of colours, as I still don’t know the sex of the baby until possibly Monday… so with tie dye, you can get away with using pinks/purples and blues on girls and boys without it looking too gender specific!

So here’s what I used:
8x 100% cotton babygrows.
1x big plastic bowl
As many ziplock bags/food bags as babygrows you have.
1x pair of gloves (trust me, no matter how careful you are, you will need these!)
Lots of rubber bands, for 8 babygrows, I used about 20-30 rubber bands of various thickness.
1x towel (or paper towel), to pick up any drips
1x metal grate, or something you wont mind getting full of dye that is flat.
As many empty bottles as you’ll need (I needed 4 as I had purchased 4 dye sachets).
And the dye sachets, I use dylon hand dyes (Ocean blue, sunflower yellow, tulip red and tropical green). I got these at £3 each on eBay.

What I did:
First of the instructions for my dylon hand dyes told me to put the powdered dye in 1 litre of hot water and tablerspoon of salt and to stir into 4-6 litres of water. I did this last time and my tie dye stuff was very faded and washed out very quickly, this time I wanted the colours much more vibrant and not to fade so quickly over time. So I just put the tablespoon of salt and the powdered dye into a small water bottle containing 500ml of water and filled it to the top.
Then you want to rinse all the clean cotton babygrows in a cool water with lots of salt (I used about 5 tablespoons worth) so that the cotton becomes very porous and will absorb more of the dye (or so we hope!).
Then you need to decide what tying methods you want to do. I did a spiral design a few times and stripes a sun burst one and finally a smaller circualr one. Here’s where I learned how to do those folding/tying methods:

Swirl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PJnM6MK30U
Stripes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClusoHEr058
Sunburst: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OakSAIrLasw
Small circles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_P0JbvXuiM

After you’ve banded them/folded them in the way you wish, begin to dye! Don’t worry too much about keeping in the lines of the elastic bands, the messier it is, the cooler it looks. Once you’ve got all the dye on, put them in little sandwich/ziplock bags to keep them from dripping dye everywhere. Keep them in the bag for at least 24 hours.

Then take them out of the bag (carefully) and rinse them under COLD (as cold as you can bare) until the water runs completely clear even when you squeeze them, don’t remove the bands until the water is completely clear or you run the risk of them bleeding and making the white bits go a light blue/pink colour which doesn’t look so nice. Then once their complely rinsed, put them in the washing machine on a COLD rinse and spin. Then let them air dry on a rack or something (not in direct sunlight as this can bleach the colours out). Once that’s done you can iron them on hot to seal the colours in (though I didn’t do this and mine aren’t fading yet!).
When washing them, wash them separately on a normal wash 2-3 times just to ensure they don't run on any other clothes.

Hope you enjoyed my tutorial :D