OVER the past couple of years, the fashion world has embraced tie-dye with open arms. There are limitless options for shoppers. But where is the fun in that? With our range of activities limited by the spread of COVID-19, tie-dying is exactly the elaborate, multi-step activity we need now. It is essentially the bread baking of apparel projects. Here’s how to do it.

What you’ll need

1. A shirt, obviously. At home tie-dyers are best served using anything 100 percent cotton or linen.

2. The dye. You can find kits on Amazon that come with 14 shades plus many of the other essentials you’ll need, but the colors may not be as vivid or long-lasting as you’d get from a Procion dye. If you’re really going for professional results, you’ll also want a soda ash to pre-soak the tees. If you don’t buy those kits, you’ll need small but essential pieces like plastic squeeze bottles, a bucket or tarp, large plastic bags, gloves, and rubber bands.

3. A dye fixative so all your hard work doesn’t go to waste.

Man your work stations

You’ll want to do some preparations before starting this project: mix your dyes, get them in their little bottles, wash the T-shirt and pre-soak it if needed, and assemble your work station. A pro tip: Always wear gloves. Start by testing a small spot on your garment before you dye the full piece.

Choose your methods

Let’s stick with the two most popular methods of tie-dying. The first is what I’ll call the swirl, which results in that neatly done rainbow-spiral effect-the professional attire of choice for cool summer camp counselors everywhere. The second only asks you to bunch the tee up into a ball, which requires less precision but leaves much more up to chance.

The Swirl is done by laying the T-shirt out on a flat surface and placing a long circular item-maybe a baseball bat, wine bottle, or the cardboard tube from a roll of tissue paper-in the middle of the tee and rotating it until it collects tightly at the center (Pinching the tee at the center with your fingers will also work).

At the end, it should look like one of those diagrams the Weather Channel uses to represent a hurricane. Secure your coiled-together tee with three rubber bands, placing them evenly so they create an asterisk.

Now comes the fun part.

Place the rubber-banded T-shirt in the bucket, on your laid-out tarp. Spray the sections of your tee with your chosen colors, flip, and repeat. This is the time to conjure the blue of the sky, the green and pink of a verdant blossoming field, or the entire psychedelic rainbow.

The balled-up method is much less methodical. It’s really as simple as bunching the T-shirt together, probably starting at the center, until you have one big glob of fabric. The more bunching you do, the more patterns you’ll get.

Really, chaos is the objective here. Spray the mass with your dyes, making sure to flip it over, and that’s it.

The final touch

Once you’ve had surely the most thrilling five-to-ten minutes of your day, place the tee-still banded together!-in a sealable plastic bag and let it sit overnight, or a full day to be cautious.

Watching paint/dye dry is the most fun you can have!

After patiently waiting, remove the tee from the bag and prepare the dye fixative. Typically, this involves mixing the solution with warm, not boiling, water. When that’s ready, place the tee in the fixative-water mixture and leave it for however long the packaging recommends.

Finally, rinse the creation in cold water and then leave it to air dry. The fixative is designed to keep the colors from running, but wash your masterpiece alone the first time to make sure.

Congratulations: You are now a streetwear designer!(SD-Agencies)