How to tie-dye socks?

Tie-Dye is one of the coolest trends that the world currently is obsessed with and thus, socks couldn’t be left out. Luckily, it’s not difficult at all to make these trendy socks yourself. Even more so, it’s actually an incredibly fun activity as well. However, if you don’t exactly know how to start with tie-dyeing your socks, keep reading this ultimate step-by-step guide!

Necessities

-A Pair of White Socks

-Rubber Gloves

-Hair Ties or rubber bands

-Newspapers

-Fabric Paint

-A Bit of Salt

-Water

-Plastic Squeeze Bottles

-Plastic Bags

Step-By-Step Guide
1. Preparation Is Key

First things first, preparation is key. Dress yourself in clothes that you can get dirty in and lay down many layers of newspaper on the floor. Namely, you’ll find out soon enough how messy it can get if you want to tie-dye socks by yourself. Finally, put on rubber gloves, and you’ll be ready to go!

2. Wash Your Socks First

Secondly, wash your socks before you begin. You can do this by putting them in the washing machine or you can wash them by hand, whatever you prefer. Whatever the case, the socks should be slightly wet still once you actually begin with the tie-dyeing process.

3. Mix the Paint With Water

The next step is to mix the fabric paint (also known as the dyes) with warm water in a big bowl. If you feel like you need some more instructions with this task, you can just read the instructions on the package of your type of dye. The ratio between the dyes and the water heavily depends on what brand of fabric paint you’re working with. However, as a general rule of thumb, for every cup of warm water you take, you should use about two tablespoons of fabric paint.

A very useful tip in this department is to mix in one tablespoon of salt as well since that will ultimately cause the paint to stick to your white socks better.

Make sure that you mix these ingredients thoroughly! You can use a fork or a whisk for this, whichever you think is best. If you don’t mix the water and the dyes thoroughly, your mixture won’t be thick enough so that’s definitely something to keep in mind.

Repeat this step for every colour that you want to use. You can get really creative with this, but if you want to avoid patterns that are too busy, it’s recommended to stick to four colours maximum. Nevertheless, the choice is entirely up to you.

4. Put the Dyes Into Plastic Squeeze Bottles

Furthermore, once your dyes are mixed thoroughly, it’s time to put them into plastic squirt bottles. You should have one bottle for each colour that you want to use later on.

5. Let Your Socks Soak In a Bowl With Water and Baking Soda

Now, before it’s actually time to tie-dye your socks, you should let them soak in a big bowl of cold water first for about 5 minutes. Add a tablespoon of baking soda as well. This will make it easier to get the hair ties around the socks, and it will also make it less challenging to get the patterns that you want.

6. Start Tie-Dyeing!

Finally, it’s time to start tie-dyeing your socks! Grab some hair ties or rubber bands and start putting them around your socks. There’s no general rule you can follow that will tell you how to twist, tie, or scrunch your socks using your hair ties. Namely, it all depends on the kind of tie-dye pattern you want to create.

Now, you can use your different squeeze bottles, and you can just apply your dyes around the hair ties to your liking. However, please ensure that you don’t leave too much blank space on your socks, because this won’t result in an aesthetically pleasing whole.

7. Put Your Finished Socks Into Plastic Bags

Once you’re content with how you’ve applied the paint, you can put the finished socks into plastic bags or you could choose plastic wrap/cling film, but you have to be able to close them. Leave them in those bags for about 24 hours and put the bags somewhere warm. For example, if it’s warm and sunny outside, you can just lay them down in the sun until they’re completely dry.

8. Rinse and Wash Your Socks

As the last step, you first need to rinse out the remaining dye from your socks using warm water until the water runs completely clear. Don’t forget to put on your gloves for this!

Once this is done, you can take off the hair ties, and then, you can wash your socks in the washing machine at a low setting. After this step, all that’s left to do for you is to put your tie-dye socks into the dryer, and voilà, you can wear them whenever and wherever you like!