Hello everyone! We had tie-dye last Wednesday (13th) as part of our initiatives. :)

In a nutshell (with the help of our friend Wikipedia), tie-dye is a process of tying and dyeing a piece of fabric or cloth which is made from knit or woven fabric, usually cotton; typically using bright colors.

Poh Kah and Zephania selected a few tutorial videos for us to learn some basic designs from before we embarked on our (slightly) (messy) journey to tying our piece of shirt or cloth with rubber bands and dyeing them with the available colours!


We had black, orange, red, green (the fake purple/ navy), pistachio green (the fake green/yellow). :) [On a side note: Basically what happened was that the packet of green dye appeared purple when we opened it but ended up fulfilling its promise in dyeing our shirts green nonetheless. And the pistachio green was too light that it turned out almost like a shade of yellow hahaha]



After dyeing our shirts and canvas bags and pieces of cloth, we left them to dry and let the colours sink in for about an hour (should’ve been longer though!) before we brought them home to rinse with water.

Some things to note would be that the material of the cloth should preferably be cotton so that the dyes can be absorbed, and that the rubber bands have to be tied tightly enough to make sure the patterns emerge at the end. And even though the tying of rubber bands part could be seemingly easy, it is an extremely crucial step to achieve a nice end-product! Lastly, apply the lighter colours first as well or else it will end up as a mess if the darker shades are dyed wrongly and it will be hard to cover up :)

I must say it was a fun experience, even despite the fact that the results weren't as expected (we did follow the tutorials!). But I guess it was precisely this that made it even more interesting. :) Our designs may turn out unexpected in the end, but who knows~ some of us might even like the 'new designs' better instead. :) And the fact that we dyed our own shirts, we 'created' something ourselves!

Labels: Initiatives