Day 15. Tie Dye

Today we went to a tie dye studio, 之凡之梵, in Dali Old Town. I found a promotion on the MeiTuan app. Claire and I chose to dye a T shirt and picked our design. A young lady there guided us how to do it.

First we drew lines, next we use a needle put a thread along each line.  

We then pull the threads and wrapped the crumbled part tight.

I wanted a butterfly print. The lady used the templates to sandwich the T shirt, and used clamps to anchor the templates at the fixed position. We soaked the T shirts in water.

The dye was some naturally fermented material. The lady mixed it first. We dropped in our T shirts and kept massaging it inside the dye. The lady was tracking the time. When the time was up, we took the T shirts out and washed it in running water. We repeated this step several times.

The next step was tricky. We needed to cut loose certain threads. The lady did it for us. That released some white parts to be stained, i.e. the outer triangles in the next photo. We then put the T shirts in the dye again and rinsed it again. Finally we removed all threads and then washed the T shirt thoroughly. 

I am quite proud of the final product! Claire did a great job too. Her T shirt was similar without the butterfly.

The cost was about $30 (190RMB) including the T shirts. Best money spent! Totally worth it! It took us a couple of hours to finish our T shirts. The lady who taught us was super nice and patient. There were lots of other designs there and one could also do other things like hats, dresses, scarfs.