I cloth diaper (only at nap and night now) and babytoddlerwear and try to live as green as possible, and to the rest of my family, I’m considered very crunchy. My students often associate me with things like peasant skirts, since I wore them often, and probably wouldn’t be surprised if you told them I spent my weekend figuring out how to tie-dye a cloth diaper, a Tula blanket, and a bunch of shirts and onesies.

So, if you’re like me and are fully okay with embracing the “hippie” look, read on. Because this was such a fun and easy (and dare I say, relaxing?) activity to do both by myself and as a family.

 

Step 1

Find/buy white cotton items of clothing that you wish to tie-dye.

I grabbed a few old white newborn size onesies, two toddler sized t-shirts, an old tank top, a white Tula blanket (which is a bamboo blend), and I bought some adult sized white cotton t-shirts for $3 a piece at the store on sale. Keep in mind, cotton will absorb the dye best- so polyester blends and such will work, just not as well.

 

One of the great things about tie-dying is that you can use older items with stains, and the tie-dye will hide that stain or discoloration pretty well. For example, I had a white tank top that is pretty old and no longer very white. Now, it’s mostly blue. #reducereuserecyclefashion

Step 2

Find and assemble your dying supplies.

Buy a tie-dye kit or the materials within a kit at your local craft store (or be lazy like me and order one offline). You will need dye, squirt bottles for applying the dye (or spray bottles if you want to make a huge mess but get a spray paint look by spraying dye directly at the shirt), gloves (unless you like your hands to be colorful for a few days), rubber bands, soda ash, a bucket big enough in which to soak the items you are dying (I used a clean trash can), and plastic bags (either large enough ziplock bags for each item you are dying or reuse some old plastic grocery bags #reducereuserecycle).

I liked this kit by Jacquard (found on Amazon and at my local craft store) as it produced very vibrant results and was super easy to use.

Step 3

Follow the directions in the kit.

 

To see how the cloth diaper dye experiments turned out, check out this post on the Lalabye Baby blog! I used two different dye methods: liquid dye and ice dye!

Tips

Different folding techniques yield different results. Try out a few!

 

Click here to see my Pinterest board full of my favorite tie-dye resources for fun folds and interesting tie-dye projects to attempt, and be sure to follow me on Pinterest!

 

Have fun, and be sure to share your dye experiments with us on our Facebook page!

Happy tie-dying, hippie mommas ❤