• A white or very light-colored shirt made of 100% cotton
• Latex gloves
• Dyes (I prefer fiber reactive dyes, but you could also use Rit dye or a similar product. You could also purchase a tie dye kit.)
• Squirt Bottles
• A bucket
• A Drop Cloth to protect your work area
• Rubber Bands

• Dust mask or respirator to wear while mixing dye powders
• Soda ash. (Mix up soda ash solution according to the instructions included with your dyes, and soak your shirt in the solution ahead of time, before following the rest of the instructions in this guide.)
• Synthropol detergent for washing your dyed shirt

• Before you start, put on old clothes that can get stained. If you have long hair, tie it back out of the way. Spread your drop cloth over your work area to protect it. Put on your gloves.
• Place the shirt on a flat surface, and lay it as flat as possible. Determine the point from which you want the spiral to originate; usually it will be in the center of the shirt or at a point slightly higher than center, but the choice is yours.
• After you’ve decided the point of origin, pinch the fabric at that point between your thumb and forefingers and slowly twist the fabric in the clockwise direction until all of it has been turned. Manipulate the twisted fabric into a tight bundle, maintaining a neat spiral as much as possible. Then secure the bundle with rubber bands; use the rubber bands to form 6 or more pie-shaped wedges as shown in the photo below.

• Using colors of dye mixed up in your squirt bottles, squirt dyes onto the shirt, making sure to saturate the shirt with dye; if you don't want white areas to appear in your design, you should make sure to get down deep into the folds of the shirt. (You will probably have to move the rubber bands around a bit as you work.) You can create a swirl using only one color, or you can use more colors if you prefer. The photo below shows an example that has been dyed using purple, pink and blue.

Here is a photo that shows the finished t-shirt that was dyed using the purple, pink and blue dyes as shown above. Notice how the finished shirt looks lighter than it did while being dyed? That is typical; the colors usually look lighter when they are dry. Please keep that in mind while you are working, and adjust colors accordingly!

Here is a photo that shows a t-shirt that was dyed in a swirl pattern using only one color.

Here is a picture of what happens if you only apply dyes to the easily accessible part of the shirt and neglect to get dyes all the way down into the folds of the fabric. See all places where the fabric is white? Those are all the areas that were buried down in the folds and as such did not get dyed. Personally I think the shirt looks ugly like this; I prefer the examples above. However, a few of my students have actually liked this look, so you never know.

• After your shirt has been dyed, you will want to be very careful when you move it, because it will be saturated with dyes. You don’t want the colors to contaminate each other. From this point on you will want to refer to the manufacturer’s instructions in order to know how long to let the dyes penetrate, and how to properly care for it.
• If you are using fiber reactive dyes, you will want to carefully place the shirt inside a plastic bag and set it aside out of the way for approx. 24 hours. Then you can unwrap it, remove the rubber bands, rinse it and wash it with synthropol. Experienced dyers often wash & rinse 3 times in order to make sure the excess dye is fully removed. You can then dry it.

The photos and text in this guide are copyright Amy Solovay and should not be reproduced without permission. Thanks for your understanding!