Tie-Dye a Sweater

Tie dying is really 'trendy' at the moment. And it is really easy to do it yourself.

(Aka don't go to Urban Outshitters.)

I grabbed this sweater from the boys section in Primark, mainly because I liked the colour. But as you can see, it is tres boring... so I need to do something to it to set me apart from all the other Primark-wearing people in Birmingham.

What I'll need:

the sweater

elastic bands

some household bleach

a washing up bowl

a clothes airer

Most student houses in Selly Oak should have these items. (But, if like me you don't have elastic bands, you can get a big pot of assorted ones from Poundland.) So go and get an old sweater - preferably a darker one that you don't mind playing around with. This one was £8, so I won't cry if it goes terribly wrong!

Now scrunch it up bit-by-bit and randomly shove elastic bands round the scrunched up bits relatively tightly. It literally doesn't matter where you put them - the more mental the better!

Do that until your sweater looks something like this...

Now go and fill the washing up bowl 3/4 full with warmish water and about 100ml of house hold bleach (make sure you're wearing an old t shirt or something in case you get splashed... And rubber gloves so your hands don't get itchy.)

Shove the jumper in, making sure it is submerged. Mine didn't quite go fully under, but I just moved it around a bit every now and then.

Leave it in there for a good ten minutes. If you can't really see anything happening, add another 100ml of bleach and give it a bit of a stir. Leave it for another ten mins.

Tip: If there are any random bits sticking out of the surface, drizzle (and I mean DRIZZLE) a bit of neat bleach over the top to get some paler splashes... looks really nice.

Tip the water away and it should be looking something like this...

Now go outside with a clothes airer and let it drip dry for a bit so that all that nasty bleachy water can drip away.

N.B. Last time I bleached some jeans I didn't bother washing them before I wore them and I ended up with legs like a Leapor. So you MUST wash stuff you've put bleach on or you'll have irritated skin.

Don't put the jumper in with any other clothes, you could knacker everything. Put it on a low heat wash (30 degrees preferably!) and give it a good, long wash, with nice smelling washing powder to get rid of the nasty bleach smell. Don't put it on anything higher or it will fall apart!

Wait for it to dry.

Put it on. (I'm gonna wear mine with glam jeans and shit-loads of chunky jewellery!)