This keeps happening lately. Think I’m gonna toss my homemade SA and buy it. This was a DUI 24 hour muck dye
DS Wildgarden, dharma shitake, and DS rainforest…

I can see I need to tighten my resists, but I’m pleased how the colors came out!

I gave tie dying a shot for the first time in my life this week, and this geode came out better than anything else. Extremely happy with it, as is my wife, since she can’t seem to take it off.

Purple stained glass, pillars of creation, dharma terracotta, and a dusting of blue violet all over. In the muck, no wire.

I have been trying HWI but the dye isn’t penetrating good. After unwrapping this one I realized I had only a couple patches of color, so I got crazy with throwing dye on it, dunked in mud, more dye, a little bleach. Came out pretty chaotic and psychedelic. Other shirts here were also unsatisfying in terms of color saturation.

Either bc shirts were damp when I started misting, not enough dye, or idk. But the colors didn’t penetrate or spread good as I’d like and I’m sad.

I will continue my endeavors and won’t quit. I’d like to become HWI proficient just bc I don’t know how I would set up ice dyes in the cold season.

I will try dying dry shirt next time.

Unfortunately it got a hole in it from doing the spiral. I couldn't sell it, so it found a home in my music classroom!

I think I'm finally using enough dye to post some of my shirts.

Today's shirt is #22 for my HWI shirts. I wanted to give insight to what exactly I am doing. So for this shirt I will tell you exactly what went down. From here I would encourage you to try it out or do other things then see what happens! Don't take my process as correct or the best because it is something I developed LOOSELY from Brother Brent Dyes HWI series which I would suggest over my own method any day! HWI can be done in a seemingly endless variety of ways as with other methods of dying so I hope people dial this in further or just try an HWI!

Tools/materials:

running water (ideally hot Mr.Rockefeller)

Shirt: Tultex 290 Large

Iron bin

sink

Aluminum foil/oven tray/two cans (I use hand crushed aluminum cans done by a local artist)

gloves

powder enamel sifter

soda ash/urea/sodium alginate/calsolene oil

procion dye (electric blue, undertow, deep orange, black ice cherry, pillars of creation, tangerine)

1.5l sprayer (mine was $15 shipped from amazon basic like pesticide pumper/sprayer type deal)

65lb braided line/50lb bowstring

sinew puller

Also.. I am making this guide assuming you have ever tied/dyed a shirt! So keep that in mind! Sorry I don't make videos etc I am lazy! :D

1.) Prepare a Tultex 290 of your desired size. Today's will be L. We will wash it HOT with soap as it arrived from a distributor today. Allow to dry. Then wash hot again with NO SOAP NO NOTHING. Allow shirt to dry again until completely dry.

Why that is two washes and more work...? Your shirt is your canvas. You want that thing to have no barriers from taking dye and residues from soaps/factory chemicals for setting shirts do just that. With this process you are trying to ensure your cloth is just clean cloth. You could even go a few steps further to ensure this... many of the greatest dyers do.

2.) I turn my shirt inside out first. I don't always but I did here. You don't have to either it's your party! Mirror fold your shirt! OR DON'T because I am not your boss. But assuming you don't want everyone to inform you that it is not centered might not be a bad idea. Between you and I dear reader nothing makes me happier than not centering designs on a mirror fold >:). But for this example we shall.

3.) For this shirt I started to do Kenny style nubs on the mirror line until I got to the base. I use clips to hold the fabric together as I do this pretty standard stuff. I semi pleated the fringe at the bottom with a big nub in the center. Then I went back and continued my Kenney style/trip style nubs splitting them as I went. After I had finished that initial bind of 65lb fishing line I went back over with 50lb bow string. Brother Brent Dyes also has a run down on Kenny/tripstyle if you need!

4.) My shirt is now tightly bound and dry. No soda ash or anything just a virgin cloth. I do a few drops of calsolene oil over the top this bound fetish of a shirt..may be a mistake but it is what I do in the hopes of more penetration of color into deep folds.

5.) I layer in my sink two bowls face down>layer of tinfoil to catch loose powder>cage>shirt. I use a metal enamel sifter designed for glass blowing. It allows me to finely apply powder exactly where I want while also acting as a sifter. It has been a great tool! Not required! The aluminum foil catches any powder dye for later. I had to start using two bowls to separate my cage from my sink as the stainless steel sink would touch the cage/shirt easily acting as a heat SINK... meaning the bottom of the bound shirt got a much different temp from the top thus different colors/reactions.. you can see this is in some of my early HWI stuff!

Note: We apply our dye dry on dry nothing but tricks no magic no hoods over our heads NO PICKLES

6.) Shirt is covered in powder dye. I lift up the cage carefully removing the tin foil layer. This dye caught in the tin foil is used as a finisher to "layer" over after the first rinse. So it is set aside for now.

7.) The HWI. I use 1.5 liters of hot water straight from my tap about 140F. I add to this 250G of urea (in the form of 46-0-0 fertilizer), 1.5 tsp of sodium alginate(take that metric system), and 1.5 tsp of calsolene oil. This is a mix that many know and love as CHEM WATER. So really this is HWI using chem water! If only I could be as cool as liquid dyers and just put it in a bottle! :P The sprayer will not hold the entire 1.5L but I saved some chem water for other stuff! Now reminder here you can vary water temps and chem water ratios to your desire outcome! It will vary based on these of course!

Note on chem water: Chem water recipes are many and varied. I would suggest understanding what each part of the mix does the more or less you add. The biggest factor in chem water is how the mixture works for your blank. For tultex290 I used the above for Gildan 2000 LESS urea/thickener. etc.

8.)Using the 1.5L sprayer filled with my chem water. I start with a very weak low pressure mist to wet the surface of the powdered dyes and prevent dye from splattering off as much as possible. Really trying to kick start that dye going to liquid while avoid dye being taken off from the force of droplets. I can lift up the cage as I go checking penetration. From the bottom/sides. I did my first rinse over gently going up and down with the 1.5l sprayer about 5 min. Let it sit for 5min then come back and check how we are doing. I will then take that reserve dye in the tin foil from earlier back over the top as my agent of chaos. I will add it over the top and really push it through the fabric with high pressure. First of course lightly misting it. The mixed dyes give me a lot of surprises. It took me about 30 minutes to dye this shirt in total after the powder dye was applied. It can be done faster or slower. For HWI #15 I dyed that shirt over one hour for a reference for what a slower style of this may look like!

Note: Colors. Here I am using a 60/30/10 standard from when I paint things that are not shirts. This just means 60% dominant color 30% complimentary color 10% contrast/shade/depth(darkers colors). You can take this a step further by having a light and dark of each of the 60/30/10 as well to expand upon this. Hopefully that made sense? I am no art teacher :D

9.( My shirt is now soaked in dye and I have confirmed from the bottom it is saturated. Yay! Pariah rinse time! For me a "pariah rinse" is simply a 1:4 ratio of water to soda ash. So I usually have a teapot of pariah rinse ready that I pour over the top of the piece. Then I flip it over and pour again over the bottom to prevent one side from being less or more saturated than the other. It is then flipped back over into its original position in the cage.

10.) After the pariah rinse I transfer in the cage to an oven tray. The cage sits on top of two crushed aluminum cans to prevent the shirts from touching the baking tray. Bake for 170F for 1.5 hours. I took it out of the oven and left it outside over night to cool off and set! Then I woke up in the morning rinse until clear, wash, and dry. Post on reddit for your three upvotes then make more shirts!

Thank you for looking and reading! I always love to read anyone's thoughts on the shirt! If you have any follow up questions please do ask! I understand that at times I can be about as clear as mud!

HWI= Hot Water Irrigation!

Tl:Dr Scour your shirt> kenny style/trip style it/cover it in powdered dye/HWI with chem water in layers until desired saturation>pariah pour oven>bake 1.5 hours 170f> rest outside over night>rinse>wash>dry>post>cry.

Did a tessellation triangle fold and used scraptacular by grateful dyes

This is easily my favorite shirt from my recent dyes. I wanted to try something so I grabbed a thrift store shirt and made this. I folded it in half with the front/back isolated with the sleeve pulled through the other. I did the glitch pleating diagonally starting from the bottom corner. I used a few of my happy colors, dye under ice, and ran 3 days in a row with ice each day to achieve maximum saturation. I really love this shirt and I'm disappointed that I can't wear it because it's a girl shirt, lol...

Thanks for checking it out! 🤠🎈😯☠️🧟🍯💀🎉

Addicted to dying widespread panic shirts currently lol

Hey all, been trying to find a nice Ultramarine Blue to dye with and have had no luck. The best I can find is a powdered version online that is more for making paint and not for dying. Anyone have a dye color suggestion that is close?

Pair of overalls I did that came from my own blanks. These are peached cotton. 🙏🏼 The shirt was one I found thrifting the other day. Me and my girlfriend have a lot of sunflower imagery in our relationship so this one jumped out to me.

I want to say the colors used are

-Interstellar
-Warrior Princess
-Aurora

Looks like some Honeybee (which is what’s used on the shirt) made its way into the mix 😂

Thanks for looking ✌🏼

Learned a lot from the second shirt. Before when I was doing glitches I would put the ruler under the shirt and turn the ruler up, turn inwards, then pull out from the bottom (first shirt). Second shirt I put the ruler on top of the shirt and then pulled the fabric over it so that I could pull the ruler out towards me from top of shirt. This let me get perfect layers without overlap, which was really hard to do the first way. Seems silly and probably quite obvious to do it the second way, but I'm amazed at the difference.

Any advice on centering shirts or Kenny style?
Dye under ice

Man Blue abyss really does take over everything, I do like how clean this one turned out, and I was going for an eyeball so I dont mind all the white but I think Im tying the geode nubs too tight, this one took a long time to dye and even still borderline saturation issues. Anyway...on to the next one!

Posting this here because I’m hoping you can help even though this isn’t really dye. Doing bleach skeletons for a concert, first one turned out fine. Was painting the second one and realized… it just wasn’t changing color? It’s 100% cotton