Bleach Dying T-Shirts

I love tie-dyeing! I've done a lot of different shirts, normally just white with colored dye. Today was the first time I've ever bleach dyed anything though. It was a lot of fun! 

I did it as part of a group activity with ArtHeels. We started by spray painting the word "artheels" on our tshirts, with ordinary black spray paint.

Then we rolled them up. I used a normal spiral pattern, for what I guess would be considered a "traditional" tie-dye pattern: the psychedelic swirl type thing. 

We didn't have any squirt bottles, so I just kind of dripped the 1/2 bleach 1/2 water mixture onto it with a paintbrush. To do the swirl, you dye alternating pie pieces different colors. You can use more/less bleach for a stronger effect. 

Some people splattered theirs, some tied and then dunked them. Since they immediately went to rinse them off, the bleach didn't completely cover it. 

The biggest thing is that you do have to rinse them off - with normal tie-dye you leave them sitting for a day, but if you do that with bleach it'll burn a hole through the fabric. I left mine for about thirty minutes the first time, but I didn't like the way it turned out, you could hardly see the bleach. 

I ended up retying it and then pouring bleach-water on it using a cup. Not ideal since I couldn't control it very well. I left it sitting probably thirty or forty minutes then rinsed it in the washer. Here's the final product: 

Pretty awesome, though I wish it was more evenly half dark/half light. Still, I'll definitely wear this!

I'd love to try bleach dying a black t-shirt then going back over it with colored dye; it seems like it would end up pretty cool.