Classic Tie-Dye
How it all started
Hi my name is Lauren and I’m an art therapist. I work at a physical rehab hospital where I run a tie-dye group once a month for patients as a part of the hospital's activity programming. Making tie-dye shirts is a good way for the patients to get creative and take a break from their treatment. The patients that participate are in the inpatient part of the hospital, wearing their tie-dye shirt in the hospital usually helps brighten their day and boosts their confidence.
I’ve been an art therapist for several years now and have been incorporating tie-dye making with my patients into my work for the past two years. I’ve always loved tie-dye, I think it’s a fun way to incorporate your art and personality into your everyday life. I buy the tie dye, the dye comes in bulk and I love doing my own projects with clothing and even tapestries.
Tie-dye is sold in a fine powder and is mixed with water to make the tie-dye solution. I noticed after every tie-dye group with my patients there was always a lot of dye left over. One thing that most people don’t know is that tie-dye expires a few days after you mix it in water. I never want the dye to go to waste so I started off using the left over dye to make example shirts for my group activity with the patients. I would also experiment with different colors and patterns. I started making shirts for friends and family that wanted to buy them. I would often use the leftover dye to make some of my own tie-dye shirts.
I soon started to realize that there’s only so much space in my closet for tie-dye shirts, I probably own so many I could wear one for every day of the week! Speaking of my closet, one thing that most people may not know about me is that I try to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and one of my favorite ways of doing that is thrifting! I love thrifting for clothes and buying second hand. What I’ve found along my thrifting journey is lots and lots of white shirts! Now what do you get when you combine leftover dye and lots and lots of white shirts? Well you get a very creative art therapist who wants to make lots and lots of tie-dye shirts!
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What is a Classic Tie-dye Shirt?
I define my classic tie-dye shirts as a white or light colored t-shirt with liquid dye made in a simple and/or classic tie-dye pattern.
In combination with finding white shirts as I thrifted and left over dye I decided it was time to commit to making a website to sell all of the shirts I was making! I’ve had so many patients and family and friends question why I wasn’t selling my shirts and saying “you could make so much money from these!”
The fact of the matter is that while the money is nice I really just love the craft of making tie-dye shirts. I love the way that I feel wearing my shirts knowing that they are handmade by me and made with an environmentally friendly mindset. My hope for my classic tie-dye shirts is to make an affordable shirt for anyone to buy while still helping fund future tie-dye projects for me to do with my patients; in combination with leftover dye and thrifted shirts I’m confident this will be possible.
It’s very possible that in the future I will create new projects with tie-dye that will cost more, especially as designs may become more complex and use more dye products. Classic Tie-Dye shirts will most likely be a more permanent fixture of my website since I do the patient tie-dye groups once a month.
Shirt Sizing
Since a good amount of the shirts I have in my shop are thrifted I try to describe the sizing as well as I can. I include the tag and brand in the imaging of the shirt, and if necessary a small description of the shirt in the sizing description section. Please be aware that I’m using my best judgment as to the fit of the shirt and try to have that in the title of the shirt.