How to Tie Dye: Craft Guide for a Colorful Swirl Design

Tie dye art is a lot of fun and easy for young kids and adults alike. You can pick your own color scheme and create designs for your tee shirts, kurtas, skirts, cushion covers, bed-spreads, curtains, etc. Here is a guide to get you started on tie dye art. While you can make many designs, you will see how to make a colorful swirl in this article.

How to tie dye guide: Get the ingredients
* Fabric – A fabric that can be dyed. Fabric with a large percentage of cotton is the best choice. Some silk fabrics can also be dyed.
* A thin long pointed object like a pencil.
* Strings/rubber bands – You need these to tie your fabric to create the art work.
* Dye – Use a good quality dye like RIT. Each color costs around $1.50-$3.00. Select the number of colors depending on the design in your mind. Dyes come in powder and squirt/spray form.
* Soda Ash – To pretreat your fabric to improve absorption of the dyes.
* Gloves – Use gloves and protect you hands from getting stained and from the soda.
* Buckets – For water and the dyes.
* Stirrer – Something to stir the dye and water in the bucket.
* Saran wrap – To wrap and keep the dyed fabric damp.
* Newspapers – To safeguard you work bench from getting stained.

Wear clothes that you can afford to discard if they get stained.

How to tie dye guide: Prepare your work bench
Lay some newspapers on a flat smooth surface. And place the saran wrap on top to avoid staining/diffusion from the dye. Wear your gloves.

How to tie dye guide: Tie your fabric in a swirl
Pick the point on the fabric that should be the center of your swirly design. Place the tip of your pointed object at that point and swirl it around so that you fabric spins around in a swirl and forms a disc-like lump. Preserve the shape of the disc by tying strings or putting rubber bands around it.

How to tie dye guide: Pretreat your fabric
Pretreat your fabric with soda ash (if required by your dye manufacturer) by dipping it in a bucket containing the ash dissolved in warm water for 5-10 minutes. Else pretreat your fabric by dipping in warm water alone. Remove excess water by squeezing it out but leave your fabric damp.

How to tie dye guide: Dye your fabric
Dissolve your dye in water as instructed by the manufacturer. Dip one sector of your disc (say a quarter) in the dye or place the disc on the saran wrap and pour the dye on to it. After 5-10 minutes, squeeze to remove excess dye. Use different colors on the other sectors and squeeze the excess dye. Tightly pack the disc in saran wrap to keep the dampness in and let it sit for 10-15 hours.

How to tie dye guide: Dry your fabric
Remove the saran wrap and pour cold water on the fabric to rinse away excess dye. Then untie the disc and soak again in cold water for 5 minutes. Then rinse with warm water until color does not run. Now dry in dryer or hang to dry.

How to tie dye guide: Personalize
Now you can embroider on your colorful fabric or emboss ready made patterns on to your fabric. Alternately, you could begin with a fabric that already has some art work on it and then dye it. Pick dye colors that contrast well with art work. Now you are ready to show it off!

So get creative with tie dye and display your colors!