Orange tie dye t shirts using Dylon goldfish orange

Here I am going to describe how I used a packet of Dylon Goldfish orange to create an interesting patchy tie dye effect.

The following photo  shows the equipment I used. It is important to always wear gloves which I do. I find you can use either normal household gloves or the latex multipacks that are readily available in the shops are particularly good as they stretch to fit hands.

Normally tie dye is done with elastic bands and string, but I am experimenting with nylon hair bands and metal paper clips. They  work in a similar way, creating areas where the dye won't reach by holding the fabric in pleats and folds. I scrunched up and tied the fabric randomly before beginning.

The methiod I am using is following the instructions on the packet.

Here I have the salt, 250g is needed,  tied up white t shirts, packet of of Dylon hand dye in Goldfish Orange, water for dissolving the dye and the water for the due and salt bath.

First I dissolved the dye pack in  warm water

Made sure that was properly mixed, then I poured the 250g salt into the green container of water about 6 liters is recommended, I sued around 5 liters as my container is a little too small.

The salt was mixed thoroughly into the water and then the dye solution added

Here I have added a small amount of the dye, just to show you the dye bath, the rest is added and mixed.

My t shirts were dry, as I had washed them previously, they need to be wet to help the dye process work better, so I dipped them into a small bowl of water to wet them thoroughly, before I added them to the dye bath.

Almost immediately the colours starts to be taken in. With the hand dye solution you have to mix it for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes I removed the items , and squeezed out excess dye and placed it into a bowl of clean

Here are the t shirts with the ties removed

They look very interesting and unique like this but I decided to pit them back into the dye for a few minutes to make the t shirts orange thorough out. 

I kept stirring to help the mixture reach all the surface area easily, then they were rinsed and put into the washing machine for a rinse cycle.

Here are the t shirts drying in the sun after being taken out from the machine. The yellows colour is just the sunlight and my camera messing up the photo a little.

You can see the result is a patchy effect with a pale orange background and a darker tie dye effect.

It looks great as it is or can be used as the background for adding fabric paint or block printing.

A couple of things to note if you want the exact shade is to weigh the fabric, and dissolve the dye in the right amount of water, I used double the quantity for a lighter colour as I intend on using the pattern as a background.