Tie Dyeing a Large Blanket

Recently we attended the wedding of Steve's cousin Tony and his bride Krystal, And I'm one of those annoying people who likes to give personal gifts instead of just buying something off of a registry, so we decided to make something for them. Well, really I decided to, and Steve really liked the idea. I knew that Tony and Krystal shared our love of tie dye, so I decided to make them a big tie dye blanket. Plus, they were uniting two families with three children between the two of them, so I thought it would be great to give them something that would be part of snuggly family nights.

I started out by buying an organic cotton blanket from Target. I chose cotton because I didn't want to have to do anything extra or elaborate to get the dye to really stick. I chose a twin size because I couldn't find one that was just a throw, and I didn't want it to be huge.

I then headed to Hobby Lobby and bought a large bottle of  dark blue Tulip dye and two packets of black dye refills. I also picked up an extra squeeze bottle. Although I wouldn't combine navy and black in an outfit, I thought that they would compliment each other in the blanket because the black wouldn't be a true black when added to such a large white blanket.

I then tied up the blanket using yarn. I decided to go for a burst pattern, so I simply grabbed a spot remotely near the center, pulled up and started twisting. I wrapped the yarn fairly tightly around as I twisted. I had to be sure not to wrap it too tight because sometimes with new fabric, the dye doesn't absorb well, so I wanted it to be able to easily seep into all of the little nooks and crannies.

Then it was time to actually dye the blanket. Let me just tell you, that was fun. Especially when Cai woke up in the middle of it. I did it in the bathtub, and it looked like I killed a burnt smurf in there. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the refill pack is made so that you can just drop it into the bottle and the packaging will dissolve. Instead, I poured the powder into the bottle and made a big mess. Lesson learned. 

I made sure that I got it as saturated as possible, and I ended up having dye left over. I then wrapped it in plastic wrap and let it sit for eight hours to allow the dye to set. I thought it looked like a huge terd. I know; I'm really mature.

 I followed the package instructions for washing the dye out and checked the results. The pattern was super cool, but it didn't really cover the blanket as well as I wanted it too, so I prepared the rest of the dye, wrapped the blanket up again, making sure that there was a large amount of white exposed when I was done twisting, and dyed it again. This time because I was low on dye, I wet the blanket to kind of spread the dye further. The combination of that and the original dye job gave it a cool layered effect, and I was pretty pleased with it.

You can see the two different dye jobs here. The darker, bluer pattern is the first time, the cloudier, grayer pattern is the second. 

The best part was that the bride loved it. We were still there after many of the guests had left, and they had started opening some gifts, and she nearly tackled me with a hug after she opened it! I love that they loved it!