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You always want to use fiber reactive dye for tie-dyeing. Do not use all-purpose dye (like rit) or your colors will end up much lighter than you would like and your tie dye folds will not be as distinct. Rit dye is not intended for tie dying and therefore does not work well for tie dying. I repeat use only fiber reactive dyes. We sell the best dyes right here at SuperHippie.Com.

These instructions are intended for tie dying large quantities of clothing. If you are dying small quantities we offer a Complete Tie Dye Kit. Our kit uses all fiber reactive dyes. There is no pre-soaking required and the dyes will not fade. The dyes do not come out quite as bright as our professional dyes but they are still good. The kit comes with 5 squeeze bottles containing dye, 5 dye packets, 8 protective gloves, 40 rubber bands, book of project ideas and complete instructions. The colors included with this kit are turquoise, yellow, purple, green, and fuchsia. These 5 colors can be mixed to obtain desired results. These dyes are the same fiber reactive dyes used by the professionals (which are also sold here) and should be used with extreme caution. Adult supervision is advised. Plese visit our Tie Dye Supplies page for more imformation.

Getting Started

Before you start to tie dye you will want to read over the How to Dye page. Now that you have read the How to Dye you are ready to begin you tie dying experiance make sure you have all the supplies you need for tie dying including dyes, sodium carbonate,latex gloves, measuring cups, squirt bottles, rubber bands, a dust mask for measuring out dyes, and a bucket for pre-soaking the fabric in sodium carbonate solution. Before you start, make sure that you wash all of the clothing that you are intending to dye. We highly suggest washing the fabric in Synthrapol (which is also sold here).

Why Tie?

You do not necessarily have to “tie” the fabric to have a tie dyed garment. You can use rubber bands, folds, twists or any other means that you would like to try. Experimenting is the best part of the tie dying experience and you can come up with some pretty amazing designs. Have fun with it.

Ways to Tie

There are many different ways to tie dye a garment. For concentric circles you can grab the garment exactly where you would like the middle circle to be, pull it until it looks like a long tube and then wrap rubber bands around it and tie dye it. You can fold it vertically or horizontally to make tie dye stripes. There are also more technical ways of tie dying, like the spiral pattern. To make the spiral pattern you lay the cloth out flat, grab the middle with a clothes pin or whatever you can find and twist. The spiral pattern takes a lot of practice. Trial and error is the best way to learn to tie dye.

Color Mixing

Mixing colors is always a fun part of tie dying. You could end up with some pretty cool colors if you try it out. Tie dying is mostly experimental. Just have fun.

Color Choice

The two things that make a great tie dye are, the choice of color that the artist used and the amount of color saturation. You really have to squirt a lot of dye into the folds of your tie dye if you don’t want to end up with a bunch of white. If you use to much dye they will mix and your tie dye will look all muddy. In order to make your Tie dye look brighter, you should only place certain colors next to each other.

A good basic rule for tie dying is to only put colors next to each other that are next to each other in the list below.

fuchsia...yellow...turquoise...purple...fuchsia

...or, for a more detailed color scheme, choose adjacent colors from the following expanded list:

fuchsia... red... orange... yellow... green... turquoise... blue... purple...fuchsia

For eye-popping color contrasts, you can avoid muddy mixtures of colors by adding a thickener such as sodium alginate to your dye mixtures; applying contrasting colors to the two sides of your bundled folded fabric will then result in alternating stripes. I hope that this tie dying tutorial helped you out. Please help the SuperHippie Family out by spreading the word about us.