In the back of my mine I knew I should just make my own tie dye sweatshirt. But I gave in to my laziness and decided to shop for one instead. I wanted a pink one. No other colors but pink. I didn’t want a pastel colored one as I wanted to refrain from looking like a pink cloud. But I didn’t want a dark colored pink one as I didn’t want to look like a Dexter victim.

During my shopping adventures, to my dismay, the selection of tie dye sweatshirts was minimal. There were plenty of shirts and pants to choose from but that’s not what I wanted. I did find something somewhat similar to what I wanted but my budget didn’t call for a $300+ sweatshirt. After a couple hours of shopping I gave up and decided to make my own.

I went to Walmart and picked up a white sweatshirt for $7 and pink tie dye for $2. Surprisingly, two local craft stores sell the same exact one for $6.

Supplies

Step One

The instructions suggest washing the garment before dying but I rebelled. I couldn’t wait any longer and I really wanted to make my tie dye sweatshirt.

First, I lined the top of my desk with a large plastic trash bag. This serves two purposes. 1. It would protect my desk from any tie dye stains, 2. Storage. After the tie dye process, the garment needs to sit in a bag overnight. Therefore, I can use the bag in two ways, to protect my desk and to store my sweatshirt after the fact.

The next step in the tie dye process was wetting my sweatshirt. Not soaking wet but also more than just damp, somewhere right in the middle. The sweatshirt or whatever will be tie dyed needs to be wet to help the color spread and set the stain.

Next, I added tap water to the bottle/dye powder and shook the bottle until the dye was completely mixed (as instructed). Now, I was ready to start dying my sweater. There’s all sorts of tie dye designs to choose from but I wanted the crumpled look so I just scrunched the wet sweater.

Step Two

Then I just squirted the tie dye all over the front of the sweatshirt. During this process I purposely added more dye to random spots just so the sweatshirt had darker and lighter spots all over the place. After I covered the front, I repeated the same process to the back. Just an FYI, I only used about half the bottle and I tossed the rest.

Step Three

Now that the sweatshirt is complete and still sitting on the plastic trash bag, I turned the bag inside out, tied a knot, and let the sweatshirt sit in the bag for about 36 hours. The instructions suggest 6-8 hours but I wanted brighter colors so I let it sit for much longer.

Step Four

Waiting the 36 hours seemed to take forever. I placed the sweatshirt in the bathtub and rinsed it in cold water (use gloves), then I washed it (separately) in hot water and dried it on regular heat.

My sweatshirt turned out better than I had hoped. Tie dying was such a fun experience and I’d love to do it again. Personally, I think it would make for a fun party or something to do during girl’s night.