Shibori Style Rope Tie Dye

Hi Guys! So, it’s been awhile since I’ve made a shirt using this technique. This is a Shibori style shirt kind of like the technique of wrapping the shirt around a pipe. I think this technique might be a bit easier than the pipe method though. Here is a link to the YouTube video if you haven’t seen it.

I started off with a piece of yellow polypropylene rope that is usually used for water sports. It’s what I’ve used in the past, and it worked well since it doesn’t soak up the dye. I only had thin rope so I bunched it up and held the layers together with rubber bands and sinew. If you have a thicker piece of rope, it would probably be easier though.

After I wrapped the shirt around the rope, I pushed on each side of the shirt pushing it toward the middle of the rope and creating wrinkles and folds. This is what will give some of the “texture” to the shirt after it is dyed. To hold the shirt in place, I used kite string. Keep in mind that whatever part of the shirt you wrap around the rope first, that will be the part of the shirt that has the least amount of dye.

I am dyeing a Gildan adult size large shirt and I mixed 1 cup of Dharma’s Dances With Raisins dye. I think the hardest part about making a shirt with this technique is using the right amount of dye. Too much dye, and the shirt will be a solid color. Too little dye, and the shirt will just look like a mistake. For this size shirt, I think 1 cup of dye worked really well.

I applied the entire cup of dye to the shirt and then used my hands to kind of squeeze it into the shirt a bit. Then I allowed it to process, rinsed, washed and dried it and…Voilà!