Keep Tie-dye Weird

Ugh, how I hate the word.  Tie-dye.  It makes me think of hideous too-bright rainbow swirls and "Keep Austin Weird" emblazoned on an ill-fitting touristy t-shirt.  It's become so mainstream that nothing about them screams particularly weird.  Shops and even other places have assimilated the design into their cultures, and now they're everywhere you look, from football games to truck stops.

But why should I let that make me hate the word tie-dye?  I like some tie dye, and it is as succinct and accurate a description of the process as you could imagine.  You tie something up, then you dye it.  Easy.  Depending on how you tie and how much dye you use and where you put it, you can get infinite variations.  You don't have to use the rainbow swirl, you can make bunch of brown wavy pleats if you so choose.  And the process is fun.  

I've always enjoyed the process more than wearing the finished project, although way back in middle school I made a bandana with these cool dyed strings, so instead of using the strings as resist, they were making the color. At the time, wearing a headscarf was all the rage, so I wore my bandana to school alot.  I even got called to the office for my "gang symbol".  Right.  The gang of hippie tie-dyer kids.  Who regularly got smashed against lockers on our way to ACE classes, or art class, or maybe woodwind rehearsal.  There may even have been some of us in the Extreme Reading elective.  But I'm not sure, since we were merely a loosely formed band of kiddos who were concerned about whether or not we might get caught in the crossfire of a saloon brawl at lunch.  That being said, we were a huge threat to all the even titchier or even dweebier kids, mostly due to our prayers that the thugs would beat them up instead.  I still have that now-faded bandana. 

But I digress.  My point is actually how much I love dyeing things.  Resist-dyeing things.  

Yesterday, I dyed these diapers for my "more diaper mods" project.  My intention was to end up with one color on the inside of the circle and another for the background. 

  

 

My first attempt at dripping dye into the tufts created by the ties was a catastrophe.  The dye got everywhere, including my hands.  I had also tied some big tufts with rubber bands just to see.

 

The next attempt, I was trying to dye the entire thing first and then color the tufts.  It still didn't work well, so I just aimed for a more even dye all over.

For this piece, I wanted more white in the background since I could tell the blue had mixed up pretty dark.  So I crumpled up the cloth in the plastic bag it would sit in, and splashed dye over the top without worrying about getting much on the bottom.

By the time I got to the last piece I had a technique that seemed to work.  I put the green dye in a plate and dipped the tufts into it.  They were close together so it was hard to get them individually but they were also different lengths so I couldn't get them all in at once.  I had to do a couple at a time, which was more time consuming than I'd like without being as neat as I really wanted.  I then overdyed it all blue.   

I like how they all came out, these weird tie-dyes.