Shibori Dying Tutorial

Last month, we celebrated my dear friend Molly’s baby shower and her sweet boy Emmett and I dyed a ton of stuff using a traditional shibori method (which I have never done before) and everything turned out so beautifully ya’ll wanted a tutorial so here we are!

First up, here is what you’ll need:

Shibori dye - I used this kind and followed all of these instructions

5 gallon bucket

wooden stirring stick

100% cotton materials to dye - I did baby onesies, masks, and napkins

wooden squares (mine came with the kit) but cardboard pieces work as well)

rubber bands

gloves

I cannot stress how easy this is. I recommend purchasing a kit and following the instructions on how to prep the dye. I have now done this twice and it has worked flawlessly each time. While your dye is “settling” you can wash and prep your fabrics. I washed everything on a quick cycle with a bit of detergent and straight out of the wash (and a little damp) started folding.

I basically only did 2 types of folds and just slightly altered each to get tons of different patterns. The first is a simple accordion fold. So you can either start “hot dog” or “hamburger” style - remember that from kindergarten?? Or vertically or horizontally folding back and forth. From there you can simple place the wood pieces on either side, or you can then switch it up and fold it now the opposite way. For example - if you take a baby onesie and start from the top and accordian fold all the way down - you can then fold it half horizontally or leave as is and you will get slight variations of the lines when you’re done.

The second one I did was simple take a bunch of fabric in a fist and simple wrap a rubber band around it making almost bubbles throughout the fabric - my photos show what I mean. I read a few tutorials that said to wrap the fabric around a rock and wrap your band around that… I didn’t do that and it turned out just fine. So take that however you want.

Once I had all my “folds” I set a timer for 4 minutes and literally held as many in my two fists as I could and submerged for 4 minutes and let sit out for about an hour. It’s crazy how they come out looking bright neon green and then turn to indigo as they oxidize! Then I got off all the bands and just straight dumped into the washing machine with a little detergent and they came out perfect!