Attempting a Heart Tie Dye Crewneck

Happy almost Valentine’s Day! This isn't my usual type of project, but every now and then a girl needs a fast, chaotic, and potentially disastrous craft to feel alive. So today I'm attempting tie dye for the very first time, and I'm actually writing this while the dye does its thing (for the second time)—fingers crossed we end up with something that resembles a heart.

This crewneck from Urban Outfitters was my inspiration:

Could I have just spent $8 to get it on Depop? Yes. Did I plan early enough that it would get here in time for Valentine’s Day? No.

So instead I spent about $40 just for the attempt, because apparently I have that much faith in myself.

Here’s what I got:

• Gildan adult crewneck, white, size large

• Rit all-purpose liquid dye in fuchsia

• Rit all-purpose liquid dye in violet

• Plastic squeeze bottle

• Thick rubber bands

• Nitrile gloves

The first thing I did was draw the heart on the sweatshirt using a water-soluble marker.

Getting it rubber-banded into a heart shape was the scariest part to me so I wanted to get it out of the way first. This was, to say the least, even harder than expected.

Most of the tutorials I found used thin t-shirts and had you accordion the fabric along the heart outline before wrapping a band around it.

It took me about two hours of trying that method to accept the fact that a thick crewneck sweatshirt does not follow the same laws of physics. 

So what I ended up doing instead was loosely tying off the center of the heart and then slowly pulling the surrounding fabric into that bunch until the traced lines disappeared under the rubber band. After that, I added a second band over the first one and made that one extra tight.

The sequestered fabric puffed up into a little 3D heart, which I chose to interpret as a good sign. 

After that, I worked outward from the heart, gathering the rest of the sweatshirt and adding more rubber bands.

With the rubber bands in place, i got the whole bundle damp. Then it was time to mix the dye.

I did roughly 50% warm water, about 45% fuchsia, and a small splash of violet since I was aiming for something in the magenta zone. Before committing, I tested the color on a paper towel first.

Here it is after I fully saturated it (or so I thought):

And here it is the next morning once the color developed:

After a quick rinse, I started cutting the rubber bands and… yeah.

I left the two holding the heart in place, but everything else came off to reveal a sweatshirt that was, unfortunately, still very committed to being white.

On the inside, I was panicking. On the outside, I was stress-sweating, re-rubber-banding, and already mixing more dye for round two.

This batch leaned a little more violet than the first, which was fine because the original mix was very fuchsia.

Then I bagged it back up. And now we wait. Again.

Whether it’s good or bad, I’ll show the final results later. One thing this project taught me is that tie dye is really not for me, and I may or may not have some control issues. So much waiting. So much faith in rubber bands.

*        *        *

Okay. It’s later.