Tie Dye

I've been talking so much about fire lately. This time, let's talk about water.

Back when I was trying and failing to find a purple shirt for Epilepsy Awareness Day, I remembered that tie dye was an option. It was the other side of summer though, and not quite in season. I found it difficult to find a kit sold anywhere, but finally found what I needed at an arts and crafts store. I didn't remember how tie dye works and thought the kit was suspiciously light, so I grabbed a bottle of standard dye as a backup plan.

I needn't have worried, the product was fine. I still wound up going for a solid purple shirt. This left me with the tie dye to use at my leisure, and I just got around to trying it recently.

This was my first attempt. I made a swirl in the centre of the shirt and then separated the colours into quadrants. I used blue, orange, purple, and yellow-green. The idea was to have contrasting colours touching and swirling out. It kind of worked, but the yellow-green is almost solely on the back. I wanted the purple to have some prominence to allude to my original intentions, but from the front it only really shows on my shoulder. It wouldn't work as an Epilepsy Awareness Day shirt.

I went for horizontal bands with a colour gradient on this one. Purple in the centre with two shades of blue, starting dark and turning light. Last one was supposed to contrast while this was all cool colours.

This was just a scattershot mish-mash of the remaining colours, since I didn't want to waste the unused dye.  I hadn't bothered to dampen the cloth unlike the other two, so the dye slid around instead of simply absorbing. Frustratingly, I think this one looks better than the other two.

Since I didn't think any of the shirts I made showcased purple enough to wear on Epilepsy Awareness Day, I came back and dedicated a whole shirt to it. I made two swirls on opposite sides, and used two shades moving from darker at the centre and turning lighter. I fell into the trap of not wanting to waste the leftover dye and dumped a bunch of it into the empty spaces, making one of the shoulder maybe a little too dark. Otherwise pretty happy with it, and I think I've got something to wear next year.