Creative & Culture

A Guide To Tie Dye Techniques

Getting that special tie-dye look is easier than it seems as garment specialist Turguy Mustafa demonstrates how to achieve the well-known spider web effect and the gracefully flowing twist effect with only his hands and some elastic bands. Enlarge

A Guide To Tie Dye Techniques

Getting that special tie-dye look is easier than it seems as garment specialist Turguy Mustafa demonstrates how to achieve the well-known spider web effect and the gracefully flowing twist effect with only his hands and some elastic bands.

Hi, I'm Turguy Mastafa, doing garment dyeing for the last twenty six years for Prestige Fashion Dyers, and today, I will be giving you some tips about tie dye and garment dyeing. Okay, so when somebody comes in and actually requires a spider web, again on the spider web, like on the camouflage, we're looking for one, two or three different colors. So, let's explain.

The first one is this is a garment and if they just want one spider web on there, just a simple one, what we'll actually do is we'll hold the garment in the middle, let it hang down and then just put an elastic band as far as we can. And this has got to be, obviously, quite tight, like that. Then what we'll actually do is we will put a second elastic band about an inch further and then the third one probably just less than an inch and a fourth one slightly less than maybe than the other one and so on.

It will go until we come right to the top. Now, the back of the garment, you can actually turn into a wool, into a bowl, or just leave it hanging loose. It all depends on which one you want but the end result for a spider web will look like this.

So, this one here, what I'm going to show is what we call a twist effect, what will give probably lines twisted coming down to the bottom. And it's actually done by just holding the garment straight like that and twisting it all the way until it really goes very, very tight, and you can't twist it anymore. And then what actually happens is when it goes as tight as you can, you hold it just through like that, the two edges together, and you will put an elastic band here like that and this is how we will achieve a twist effect. .