I have waited quite awhile to post this blog because it can sometimes be controversial. Seems silly I know, but each tie dyer has a way that they rinse their items, and some can be quite defensive of the way that they do it. I am not one of those people. I have rinsed my tie dye a variety of ways in the past, and the method that I use is a combination of science and experience. If you have a way that works better for you, please continue using your method. I’m not claiming that this is the best way to rinse tie dye, but it is the way that works the best for me. I begin rinsing my items after t ..read more

If you watch my YouTube channel you’ve probably seen me use quite a few of the Happy Cat Tie Dye colors when I ice dye. Happy Cat is a small business owned by Amanda and located in New Jersey. Amanda formulates beautiful color specifically for ice dyeing and for the color splits. She is a small business and so it can sometimes take close to a month to get your order, but I think it is worth it. Like most who use Happy Cat Tie Dyes, I started with Strawberry Skies. I saw a couple items on facebook dyed with it, and I had to try it myself. It is absolutely gorgeous and has a lot of beautiful col ..read more

I’ve had several questions about how to make thickened water or thickened chemical water to use in tie dyeing. I thought I would share the process that I use. The items that you will need are: Water Urea Dharma's Urea Sodium Alginate https://amzn.to/2EkHoZ Measuring cups and spoons Container to mix the chemical water Blender of some kind - I use an immersion blender The only difference between thickened water and thickened chemical water is that when Urea is added to thickened water, it becomes thickened chemical water. Urea is a humectant and is useful to help keep the fabric f ..read more

Prochemical is a great company to buy dye from. They are located in Massachusetts, and they have a fairly large selection of dye colors. All the colors I’ve tried are beautiful. I don’t own them all, but I have amassed a large collection. Most of the color swatches that I made were made using 2 teaspoons of dye per 1 cup of water. I haven’t found specific mixing instructions on the Prochemical and Dye website for each color. Instead I found a document that suggests using 1/2 teaspoon for pale dye, 2 teaspoons for medium, 4 teaspoons for dark and 8 teaspoons for black. There may be other instru ..read more

Custom Colours is a dye supplier that is located in North Carolina. The customer service is spectacular and the dye colors are amazing! I have quite a few more Custom Colour’s dyes that I don’t have swatches for. Before 2020, I mainly ordered dye from Dharma Trading Company. However, there were a few supply issues and I began ordering from other suppliers. Custom Colours was one of the new suppliers that I tried - and I’m glad that I did. During that time too, fabric for swatching was sometime difficult to get as well. Therefore when I started making these dye swatch blogs, I realized that I n ..read more

Grateful Dyes is a dye supplier that is located in Colorado. I’ve been purchasing dye from them for several years and they are awesome! They ship really quickly and the dye colors that they offer are beautiful. My favorite tie dye purple is the Royal Purple that they sell. I also use their True Violet and True Purple a lot. I have quite a few more of their dye colors, but I don’t have swatches for those. On their website they tell how many teaspoons of dye powder to use to make the dye match the color swatch. Here is a link to the Grateful Dyes website: Grateful Dyes ..read more

If you haven’t ever heard of Dyespin, they are an amazing company that is in Missouri. They sell fiber reactive dye used for tie dyeing, and their colors are fantastic. They also sell some other tie dye supplies, but so far I have just purchased their dye. I have only been ordering from them for less than a year, and so I don’t have all their colors yet. Each time I place a new order I add on a few new colors. I love the ones that I have though. Pure Magenta, Royal Blue and Royal Purple are the three that I use the most. The color swatches below were made using liquid dye, and I mixed the dye ..read more

If you have been following me for awhile, you probably know that I love using color swatches to pick my dye colors. Each time I get in a new dye color, I mix up a little bit of liquid dye and make myself a color swatch. I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve acquired quite the collection of color swatches. They are so helpful when I am trying to choose colors to put together on a shirt. I thought I would share photos of my color swatches. This post is filled with my Dharma Trading Company Procion MX Color Reactive Dye swatches. I’ve only included the regular colors that Dharma offers, and I h ..read more

If you’re new to tie dyeing, you may not be familiar with some of the tie dye terms. I thought I would take this blog post and try to define a few of the common terms you may hear. Liquid Dyeing - Mixing the powdered Procion MX fiber reactive dye with water (and possibly other chemicals) to use as a liquid. Ice Dyeing - Using the powdered Procion MX fiber reactive dye in powdered form along with ice on the shirt. OWB - Out White Brite Laundry Whitener DOI - To place the dye over the ice when ice dyeing. DUI - To place the dye under the ice when ice dyeing. TDS - Tall deep scrunche ..read more

I think one of the fun things about tie dyeing is trying various color combinations together on a shirt. I know though that choosing colors that go together can be very intimidating to some people. So hopefully I can help take some of the stress out of choosing colors. Let’s go over a little bit of color terminology before we get into how to choose colors. The 3 primary colors of tie dye are fuchsia, turquoise, and lemon yellow. When you are dyeing with liquid dye, it mixes very much like paint would. Therefore, fuchsia and turquoise would mix and form purple. Fuchsia and lemon yellow would mi ..read more