1) Lay the T-shirt flat on the table

 

2) Pinch the T-shirt (you can do this with a clothes peg) where you would like the middle of the spiral to be.

 

3) Start to twist. Do this slowly as you want neat even folds rather than huge mountains. If you start to get huge mountains, slow down and tuck the fabric in as you twist.

 

4) When you have the T-shirt twisted into a flat disc start to wrap elastic bands around it to divide it into segments.

 

5) Put 2 litres of warm water in a bowl add 2tbsp of Soda ash & stir well. Soak the T-shirt in Soda Ash solution for at least 15 minutes.  

 

6) Squeeze out the excess Soda Solution and put you T-shirt on a bin bag.

 

7) To make up a dye bottle – add 1tsp of powdered dye to 200ml of warm water, put on the lid and shake well – repeat for each colour.

 

8)Take one bottle of dye and squeeze it into one of the segments making sure that you squirt inside the folds. It is a good idea to turn over the T-shirt and do this on the other side too. As you are using four colours squirt the same colour dye into the opposite segment too.

 

9) Wipe the bin bag and continue with your second colour. Repeat until you have dyed each segment, remembering to wipe the bin bag between dye colours.

 

10) Put the dyed, tied up T into the bin bag and leave for 24 hours for the dye to fix. Try not too move the T-shirt around too much as you don’t want all the colours to mix.

 

11) Whilst the T is still tied up, rinse with cold water until the water runs cold.

 

12) Untie the T under running water and put on a hot wash on it’s own with detergent (non bio is best) to remove the excess dye.

 

13) Leave to dry. To make sure that you don’t dye the next load in the machine run another cycle with detergent on the hottest cycle with an empty drum.