So you know by now that I’m obsessed with anything colourful. My eyes can’t help it; I’m drawn in like moths to bright lights. I love trying new craft workshops out and just experimenting with things I’ve never tried.
On a sunny/windy day Madison and I headed to the Queen of Hoxton rooftop to learn how to tie dye fabrics.
Tie dye is a funky style that has been around for years, originated in the 1960s probably by hippies high on life and other substances. But now the style is seen at festivals, on most corners of East London and pops up in our favourite high street stores all the time.
With a goal in mind that by next summer’s festival season I will be dressed head to toe in my own tie dye creations we eagerly paid attention to Hannah our teacher.
We dressed ourselves in plastic aprons and latex gloves ready to get our creative urges flowing.
The first design we were taught was the spiral technique. We dunked our t shirts into a bucket of water until dripping wet. We ringed out the water and pegged to the wall trellis, hoping the wind didn’t blow them away.
Hannah laid the tables with numerous bottles of bright dyes and a bucket for each of us. For the spiral we carefully pinched the centre of the t shirt swirling it in one direction until we wrapped all sections around to form one large shell. We placed our spirals in a bucket and picked however many colours we wanted to add to our design.
I selected purple pink and blue. Pouring the lightest colour first I sprayed my top with dye soaking the colour into three sections similarly to a pie chart. I made sure the colours overlapped in the middle.
Once my spiral was dripping in dye I flipped it over and gave the other side the same treatment. This part is where it all got a bit messy, you can both tie the fabric together to hold it in place or leave it free and see what happens.
I decided to go with the flow and not tie mine. I clumsily placed my dyed spiral in an airtight bag and put to one side.
The next step was to learn how to do a crumple tie dye. We dunked our new tops into the bucket of water again and rung out an excess water. The reason the tops should be wet is because the dye won’t spread easily on dry fabric. The dye tends to just stick to dry material; therefore the section that dye is applied would just create a very rigid splashed paint effect rather than an abstract mixture of colours.
So after we put our damp tops into a new bucket we crumpled all the sections creating waves with our tops. Then picked as many colours as we liked starting with the lighter shades we soaked the fabric in dye. Every time we switched colours we’d rearrange the material so any white sections could be exposed and dye poured onto. We experimented with lots of colours and made sure to flip our tops over as we poured the dye. Once complete we placed our crumpled dyed tops into an airtight bag and left them to one side.
For the colours to soak in and create the most amazing design we were told to leave the items soaking for 24hours.
Which was seriously hard as all we wanted to do was open up our creations and see what our carefree splashes of dye had made.
To keep ourselves distracted we claimed our free drink vouchers and chilled out on the brightly coloured roof terrace. The sun even popped out just in time and we sank into our stories we’d been saving to tell each other.
The waft of food being cooked on the terrace was too tempting to refuse and we tucked into gigantic burgers with smoked cheese, coleslaw, salad, and couscous and potato salad.
We spent the rest of our day chatting until we nearly lost our voices and sipped away on Pimms on the rooftop, which got super busy.
24 hours later…
We ran outside tipped out our plastic bags and unravelled our multi-coloured tops. We rinsed the excess dye off until the water ran clear and hung them to dry.
A few hours later our tops were dry and ready to be worn.
Check out Hannah’s classes here: Tie Dye High Five.
Not bad for our first attempt hey. I bet you wanna try your luck at being a chilled out hippy now!
Peace out.
