Name: Mark
Message: Do you have any tips how to make good "crinkle" style shirts? Something like this link.
I tried once by making just a random bunch and tieing it here and there. It was a complete failure.

If you keep trying, I am sure you will succeed. Crinkle style dyeing seems like one of the easiest styles to me. The Tie Dye Wiki has a good tutorial on how to do the scrunch or chaos fold. The secret is to apply dye to only one side of the flat-crumpled and tied fabric, or a different color to each side. This is difficult to do with full immersion dyeing, which is the normal way to dye with hot water dyes, but if you apply very concentrated dye directly and then steam the dye to help it bond to the fiber, you can use very similar techniques to those we use with cool water fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX dye.

This alternate method to try with your hot-water dye requires that you dissolve it in only a relatively small amount of water. It does not matter what the temperature of the water is, as long as the dye dissolves. Including salt might help in the dyeing process, though it makes it more difficult to dissolve the dye. Put it in plastic squeeze bottles such as ketchup and mustard are sold in, or try a rubber bulb of the sort sold for cleaning babies' ears, perhaps. Apply the dye to the different sections of your tied shirt, as described in the instructions you have seen online for cold water dyes. You will always need to make an effort to get the dye in between the folds of the fabric. After you have done this, wrap the shirt in plain paper, fasten it with string so it does not unwrap itself, and then steam it, just like you are steaming vegetables. There should be water in the bottom of your cooking pot, some sort of rack to hold the shirt out of the water, and a lid to hold the steam in. I think that half an hour of exposure to a good amount of steam should do the job. This may take take some testing to get it right. Most hot water dyes are not very washfast; if you can, use an after-fix dye fixative treatment like Retayne; if not, launder only in cool water.

I hope that you will be able to acquire a good cool water fiber reactive dye, which makes it a great deal easier to tie-dye and produce long lasting, bright, pretty results. [See previous blog entry on where to buy fiber reactive dye in Finland.]

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