Tie-Dye Techniques - How to Crumple Tie-Dye

Wanting to adventure into diy tie-dye with a simple technique? Crumple tie-dye is the best. Firstly, you can do it on a variety of different garments from socks to shirts, hoodies and sweatpants. We even did it on woollen coats! Secondly, you can do it with one, two or multiple colours or bleach (for a reverse tie-dye effect). The technique is very easy so we'll guide you through it step by step. 

Start with deciding the garment that you would like to dye. If it's new pre-wash it so any finish that is on the surface will come off and dye will penetrate easily. Once your garment it's dry, lay it flat on a surface. To simplify,  we will show you this technique with a t-shirt. 

 

Start to crumple, so basically scrunch the fabric using both hands. 

 

 

Now take your elastic bands. Any will do, I prefer to use the very basic ones so you can barely see the lines once dyed. Now try to band together the t-shirt. You'll see corners will likely try to flatten so you can help yourself with the other hand.  Once tied it should look a bit like this. 

 

 

Once ready and tied your t-shirt needs to be soaked in cold water as per normal pre-dye preparation. Now there are two ways to proceed. 

1. DYE BATH OPTION: For one colour only, to submerge in dye bath or bleach bath; You need dye, salt, warm/ hot water and a pot or plastic tub. 
2. POUR DYE OPTION: For one or more colours, to pour on the garment with squeeze bottles; You need dye, warm/ hot water, squeeze bottles (depending on how many colors you want to use), a cooling rack and something underneath to collect the extra dye that will drip from the garment. I generally use a large plastic tub or an oven tray. 

DYE BATH OPTION

This option is for one colour only or bleach effect. To prepare the dye bath, warm up enough water to submerge your garment. Once warmed up add salt and dye (follow dye instructions for quantities). Test it with a tissue. If the colour is too pale add more dye. If the colour is too dark add more water. If you would like to do a bleach effect prepare a solution of 1 part bleach and 1 part water in a pot or tub. Then partially or entirely submerge the garment! It will look a bit like below. 

This is a partially submerged tote in a bleach solution. 

These are partially submerged T-shirts in a taupe dye bath. These are actually on sale on the website here. They underwent an other step with another colour before being finished though. 

POUR DYE OPTION

This option is perfect if you want to use a combination of different colours. Warm up a bit of water and prepare your tray and cooling rack. Once the water is warm, pour some in the different squeeze bottles. Add dye to each squeeze bottle. Test if the colours are the right one on a tissue. Get your soaked garment on the cooling rack. Now, you can start pouring! You can cover the whole garment or just certain areas, in case you want more of the base colour to be there. See some examples below.

Here is an example with Teal and Night Blue from RIT Dye. 

Here is another example with Navy Blue mixed with Dark Green and Kelly Green to achieve deep blues and teals. This was done on a cotton turtleneck shirt.

This is a mix of 3 different colours tested on a tissue before going ahead: acid green, moss green and dark green. I used this for a shirt and a grey coat, see below. 

 

 

Once dyed all you have to do is rinse your garment with cold water till water runs clear and dry it! I always rinse the garment still tied to avoid bleeding of colours on non-dyed areas. I also generally wash them in the washing machine with a quick cycle with 2 or 3 rinses. I find it less messy and it uses less water. 

Let's see some results! 

Here is the Teal and Night Blue. 

Here is one of the coat we made. This was tied a bit more loosely and also it's a darker colour so the pattern is not super visible. 

Here is a partial crumple tie dye done with a mix of techniques, DYE BATH and POUR DYE options. 

If you want to see more of our tie-dyes you can do it here.