I have been trying my hand at some tie-dye , but not the fancy full colour type. The cooler pauper type using bleach.
I specifically like the reverse tie-dye method (bleaching then dyeing) because bleach is super cheap to buy and if done proper that already makes something really cool. Adding colour to it just improves the chaos to "pop" a bit. Adding the colour also helps to unify the look.
Since bleaching can easily look a mess as in graphic design you need a little something that will make things seem intentional.
My first shirt definitely started minimal but then I wanted to test using random string to bleach and add some classic tie-dye spirals etc etc.
As you can see I just sprayed bleach on the corners, the circles I got by using the lid of a cookie bucket. I got an even spray from using bleach in a pray bottle. As is the shirt already works well, and likely it works better because I didn't allow the bleach to go too white.
Then I added the classic spirals, which I assume I bleached the wrong side because the back spirals are far more defined than the front ones, which also can be fortunate since I did not really want my blackholes to be secondary.
Then I went a bit crazy by putting a bunch of wool in bleach and laying it over the shirt to get a galaxy string effect. I also tried to lay it down in a way to fade towards to the bottom and not be solid all across.
The sun fades the red a bit in this image but I then added red down the middle, and tried to add yellow to the corners but I think the original bleach orange does negate the yellow quite a bit. Regardless it did add some depth which I think worked quite well. The red definitely impressed me the most in vibrance.
I didn't pay too much attention to the back , and you can see the original spirals which I think would be on the front if I did bleach it the correct way around. Lucky it was not. Although I think due to too little soda ash to make the fibers accept dye better it did take me like two days of praying to get the colours to set.
Unlike the next shirt which I am pretty sure is cursed and currently laying in some dye for the fourth time. I want it to have blue, but each time I rinse it the dye just washes right out.
This will be the last test on the shirt until I am more patient again but currently it looks a bit horrid since when the blue washes out it goes to grey and just feels like a bad bleach job.
