alamode Stuff: Ask Candy

Hey there, it's Candy! I hope you've been having a fun summer. I've got a really great question to answer from Cyn of River Dog Prints.

Hi Candy,

My boys love tie-dye Ts. Is there an easy way for us to make them ourselves at home?

Thanks,
Cyn

What a great question! I've tie dyed with groups of kids lots of times so I have lots of info and hints along the way to make it successful. I sent her the directions I'd written up for this post and asked her to take a few pictures during the process. That way I'd be able to answer any questions she had if anything I'd written was unclear. And because Cyn is awesome, she didn't take a few pix...she made movies of just about every step - wahoo! So without further ado, a very illustrated guide to tie dyeing with kids!

What you’ll need

100% cotton t-shirts, or whatever clothing you want to dye (5 or 10% polyester/ nylon/lycra is OK, but no more)
Soda Ash (Sodium Carbonate, it’s often called “pH Up” and is available in the pool supply aisle of big box stores, your local pool supply store or at online dye suppliers).
3 primary colors of Procion MX Fiber Reactive Dyes. Available from:
- http://www.dharmatrading.com/ for West coast folk
- http://www.prochemicalanddye.com/ for East coast folk
- These dyes may also be available locally at craft supply stores, but these do have a shelf life and need to be stored properly (heat and moisture destroy their reactivity) so “buyer beware”.
- I recommend these colors:

Dye Color	Code	Dharma’s name	PROchem’s name
Yellow	yellow MX-8G	#1 lemon yellow	#108 sun yellow
Fuscia	red MX-5B	#12 light red	#305 mixing red
Turquoise	turquoise MX-G	#25 turquoise	#410 Turquoise

small-ish plastic containers, 1/shirt. I use rinsed out gallon milk jugs that have had most of the top cut off (except the handle) Plastic shopping bags will do as well.
1 larger bucket
3 plastic cups and spoons
3-6 containers for dye (I use recycled water bottles with “sports squirter tops”)
1 measuring cup you’ll no longer use for food
Disposable gloves (or those Playtex dishwashing gloves)

Overview

The type of dyeing we will be doing is called low water immersion dyeing. You have a concentrated dye stock that gets poured directly onto the shirt that you’re dyeing, this way you can pour different colors on different parts of the shirt. (This is NOT the tie dye you may remember from the 70’s)

Shirt preparation
Dye preparation
Dyeing
Washout & Enjoyment!

A word about safety: all the chemicals we use are as safe as or safer than the stuff you use cleaning the bathroom. That being said, Procion MX in powder MUST be treated with RESPECT. It is a very fine powder, and should not be allowed to come in contact with your skin or mucous membranes (especially your lungs). Prolonged exposure to the powder could cause your body to develop a severe allergic response to the dye, such that you could never use it again. As “prolonged exposure” is different for everyone, you have to minimize contact with the powder: Thus always wear a particulate filter mask and rubber or latex gloves when around the powder form of Procion MX and clean up any spills immediately! Common sense also tells us to wear old clothes you don’t mind getting dye on, just in case, and with kids, doing this outside where you can hose stuff down afterwards is pretty much a given.

1) Dye Preparation (grownups should do this part)

Procion MX dyes are wonderful dyes. They are fiber reactive, which means that they actually form bonds with the molecules of the cotton fabric, once bonded, they are there for good, so they are wash fast (once you have rinsed away the unbonded dye molecules). You can achieve very vibrant colors (if that is what you want) with a minimum of fuss. The two things these dyes need to be active are a basic solution (pH ~10.5) and warmth: the dyeing should take place at room temperature (70^o F or above) and with blood warm solutions (70^o F to 90^o F—no higher). Once the dye is activated by placing it in a warm, basic solution, it will react very quickly, and be ~95% reacted within 2 hours.

In a plastic cup, measure 5 g of dye powder (this is about 2 teaspoons of dye, but weight is much more accurate)
In another plastic cup measure 1 cup of lukewarm water.
Add a small amount of water to the dye, mixing it into a paste.
Continue adding small amounts of water ‘til the powder is completely dissolved.
Pour this dye into your dye storage container. Repeat with the other primaries.

You can just dye with these 3 colors, allowing the kids to mix their own secondary colors as they’re squirting the dye on the shirts. For really young kids, you may want to mix the secondary colors for them. This chart gives you ratios to use for the basic secondary colors as well as red. In dyeing, a bright magenta/fuchsia color is a primary, a traditional red is achieved by mixing it with a bit of yellow.

	Sun Yellow	Turquoise	Mixing Red
Red	20%		80%
Orange	90%		10%
Green	50%	50%
Purple		70%	30%

Yes, I know, it's bizarre, you don’t always mix equal amounts of dye to get a secondary color that we view as being equally between 2 primary colors!

Cyn pointed out that it would be good to perhaps read a book that reminds kids about color mixing, one she suggested that I really love is Mouse Paint - have you read it?

You may also want to really limit color choices, and perhaps buy premixed colors in order to achieve a particular color scheme. I once helped my son’s daycare center (on the Ohio State Newark campus) dye shirts for like 120 kids and all the staff in the OSU colors of Scarlet and Grey. I WISH I had a picture of that. Instead, here’s a picture of my family and my brother’s family when they visited many years ago…can you guess which holiday we were celebrating?

2) Shirt Preparation

You need to have clothing that is 100% cotton (or linen, rayon or hemp). 5 or 10% polyester/ nylon/lycra would be OK, but no more. Procion MX dyes dye natural fabrics only, they can dye cotton (and other cellulose based fibers linen, rayon or hemp) in basic conditions and wool or silk in hot, acidic conditions. They can NOT dye polyester or other artificial fibers, so if you use a blended fabric, the undyed polyester fibers will give the fabric a light, “heathery” appearance.
If you’re doing this with lots of kids, make labels out of a USPS priority mail bag (it’s made from Tyvec so it won’t take the dye and will stand up to being washed), write the kids name on it with Sharpie permanent marker and staple it to the label (use 2 staples). Soak the clothes in a solution made from:
- 1 gallon warm water
- ½ cup Soda Ash
Once the clothes are fully saturated, wring them out well and “tie” them. Note: I don’t actually tie the shirts…I manipulate the shirt and then lay them in a container, the dampness of the shirt keeps them there. If you would like lines of white separating the colors, then rubber banding would make that happen. I prefer to let the colors mix, getting lovely color mixing where the dyes touch. An inexpensive container is a rinsed out gallon milk jugs that has had most of the top cut off (except the handle). Dishpans (if you have them) work well, and plastic shopping bags will do as well.

Note: Dyeing clothing that’s already been worn and is a bit stained and dingy will work, but you won’t have the brightest colors, and some of the stains may dye darker. Dyeing clothes with a silk screened/painted design will work…just keep in mind the color that you will be dyeing in the region of the design. If you have a red logo and the shirt behind the logo is red or orange, the logo may be very hard to see…but if you dyed that area green or blue, the red will pop!

4. Manipulation options include:

Scrumpling: This gives you overall texture. Lay shirt flat and push the shirt together from all sides to create the scrumpling. Place the shirt in a container that creates a tight fit. Please note scrumpling is NOT pushing the fabric up in a ball – this creates large areas that remain un-dyed, something I don’t find very attractive.