Upcycle old tee's -Vegetable dye

I am mighty proud of my upcycled tie-dye'd tee!

Finished product!

Before up cycling

I had this very nice and breezy almost white tee shirt (some blotches of yellow, natural design).

I wanted to use natural vegetable dyes on my clothes.

I used a traditional Indian method of tying and dying called "Bandhini". It is a method used on the vibrantly colored sarees of Rajestan in India.

Initially, we must tye the cotton tee-shirt in places that we would like a distinct pattern.

The thread I used was a quilters twine, very sturdy and thick enough to leave a design. I have seen multiple, minute designs done on fabric that comes with mastery of the craft.

Pre soak the fabric in water to ensure the dye spreads nicely. Make sure the fabric to be dyed is nicely washed with a scentless, minimal chemicals soap.

I boiled the skin of yellow onion for around 20

minutes on low heat and did the same with the black beans. The yellow onion skin produces a very beautiful hue of summer orange and the black beans produced a lovely blue gray.

I reccomend 1 cup of black beans for 1 cup of water to get a very nice deep hue. I only needed a very small amount for a tiny bit of tint. I also used the skin of two large yellow onions to 2 cups of coffee after and that was enough for a lovely shade.

The next thing I did was to bunch up the wet tee-shirt and I tied it a bit in the middle as I had very little black bean dye in the cup and I wanted to get the shade all the way in the middle of the t-shirt.

I soaked the top and bottom half of the tee-shirt in the onion peel dye. I places the black beans right in the middle and it worked it's way in the most exciting way.

I left it there for more than an hour to soak (some folks leave it there over night).

After the hour was up, I squeezed out any excess dye water and hung it out to dry over night.

The hues were so very pretty and deep right of the bat.

The next day in the morning, I opened up the satin ribbon in the middle and soaked the fabric in a dye fix solution.

I highly reccomend Rit and I am sure there are other very good fixers.

I let the tee shirt dry up a tiny bit more and washed it in the machine in a gentle cycle and dried it with a gentle cycle on the dryer.

That's the final hue of the shades I picked summer-orange and gray-blue.

I cut open the strands of tied up thread near the neckline and the bottom half of the tee-shirt and I loved the "bandhini" effect on my t-shirt!

I love my upycled Tee-shirt! Hope you all like it too.

I also attempted upcycling with "Batik", please check my next blog for the info on that.