How to Tie Dye a Heart on Clothes

Tie dye a heart on your clothing

Tie dying is the craft of crumbling and tying sections of fabric, such as shirts or curtains, before immersing them in a dye solution. The act of tying creates concentric rings of color or other irregular designs in the fabric. Depending on how the fabric is folded and tied, different shapes may be made to appear in the center of the design. While tie dying was first popularized in the 1960s, it is still a popular method of clothing decoration today.

Things You'll Need

• Cotton t-shirt
• Pencil
• Heart outline
• Needle
• Heavy thread
• Tie dye kit
• Plastic buckets

Instructions

1. Lay the t-shirt smoothly on a table or other flat surface. Lay a heart outline in the center of the shirt front and trace around it to draw a heart. If you do not have anything heart-shaped to use, just draw the heart freehand.

2. Thread the needle with strong sewing thread, like quilting thread. Tie a knot in one end of the thread. Sew along the heart outline, only sewing through the front of the shirt and avoiding the back. Take large stitches in the shirt. Sew along the entire outline until you get back to where you began. Do not tie off the thread.

3. Pull the thread to gather the front of the shirt. Make sure that when the shirt begins to gather, the part of the shirt that will be the inside of the heart is all together on one side, with the rest of the shirt being on the other side of the gather. Pull the thread and gather the fabric as tightly as you can, then wrap the pulled thread around and around the gather. Slip the needle under the thread to fasten and cut it off.

4. Crumble the shirt into a long rope-like object. Place rubber bands from the tie dye kit around the shirt at various intervals, keeping the shirt fabric crunched together. Make sure that you put a rubber band over the thread looped around the shirt. You will end up with a long rope of fabric with five or six rubber bands around it, along its length.

5. Prepare a bucket of the soda ash fixer from the kit. The fixer helps the fabric to absorb more of the dye and to keep it from washing out later. Place the shirt in the soda ash solution and completely saturate the shirt. Remove the shirt from the bucket and squeeze out any excess moisture, making sure not to disturb the rubber bands.

6. Mix the dyes from your kit into the squeeze bottles, following the kit directions. Make sure to shake the bottles to completely mix the dye powder into the water.

7. Use the squirt bottles to apply the dye to the shirt in sections. If you want the heart to be plain white, don't apply any dye to that part of the shirt. Apply a different color between each set of rubber bands. Lay the shirt on a plastic bag when you are done applying the dyes and allow it to sit for at least 12 hours.

8. Fill a washing machine with very hot water and the special setting soap that your kit should include. Wash the shirt while the rubber bands are still in place. When the wash and rinse cycle have finished, remove the shirt and cut off the rubber bands and remove the thread.

9. Wash the shirt in hot water and regular detergent, then dry in the dryer.

Tips & Warnings

• This method works for outlining any shape in the front of the shirt, from shamrocks to Mickey Mouse heads.

• Do not do any step that involves liquids without wearing rubber gloves. If your kit does not include them, purchase new ones to use just for this project.

References

• How to Tie Dye: Setup and Supplies