Hi quarantine life! How are you guys holding up? We’ve been doing okay here… it’s been a good time to catch up on some projects, update my sites and of course, extra self-care time.
I’ve already rearranged our living room furniture, learned how to bake perfect bread and repainted some furniture. Next up? Tie dyeee. Duh. I’m sure you guys have seen this tie dye trend everywhere by now but I wanted to try it out on one of my WTFrenchie tees and a little hoodie for Fira!
I’m not into bright bright colors for my wardrobe, so I used bleach instead to get that cool faded + burnt out look. It gives a more edgy but muted feel, I think.
It’s super easy and you don’t have to be precise with it, which is great. It turned out so adorable!
Here’s how you can do this tie dye at home:
You’ll need:
First things first; I was afraid the little frenchie face would get bleached out so I covered it with some masking tape. I didn’t do that to the hoodie and none of the letters faded, so you can probably skip this step.
1. To dilute or not?
I read a few different sites and there doesn’t seem like one proper way. One site said the shirt must be completely wet or the bleach won’t apply evenly. One site said to dilute the bleach in the bottle first. Another said to leave it on overnight and some said don’t leave it on more than an hour.
SO… what I found best was to get the tee completely wet, squeeze out excess then apply bleach directly — no need to dilute the bleach in the squeeze bottle since the tee is already wet with water. (Honestly, I ended up pouring the bleach straight from the gallon because it took forever)
2. But wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Crumple up your tee and tie with rubber bands. The more wrinkles, the more designs. You can also do the spiral method, if you prefer.
3. After your tee is secured with rubber bands, you can start pouring bleach randomly all over it. I left them out in the sun and kept an eye on it all afternoon. After 3 hours, there was hardly a difference!!! So weird, right. I just kept adding more bleach. After a few more hours, my tee definitely looked ready but Fira’s black hoodie took FOREVER — THREE DAYS, TO BE EXACT.
4. When your shirt looks spotty and “bleached”, rinse thoroughly with cold water. You can throw it in the wash with a little detergent + dryer if you want but I just rinsed really well and let them dry in the sun.
Ta da!
I really love this bleached look and gonna do a few more like this. There was some trial and error here and there but a fun project if you have some extra time on your hands. 😉
Leave a Reply