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Billed as a “hot quarantine fashion trend”, tie-dye is having a major moment. Gayle experiments with her own DIY creations

Fashion has been far from my mind since lockdown kicked in. Since the middle of March, my go-to attire has consisted largely of unflattering, baggy jogging bottoms, ancient hooded tops and manky old T-shirts. Make-up has been long forgotten, too. Wearing such dull, boring outfits and looking worn-out and haggard doesn’t do much for your mood, or your selfesteem.

But having spent three months in the wilderness, I haven’t felt the need to make any effort whatsoever.

However, while clearing out an old cupboard and discovering a box of green fabric dye, I had a flash of inspiration.

As a teenager, I went through a phase of tie-dyeing everything I could get my hands on – T-shirts, pillowcases, trousers and even toys.

A quick Google search told me that the psychedelic print is making a major comeback and is indeed billed as a “hot quarantine fashion trend”.

All I needed was some fabric to tiedye and, as luck would have it, I had two old white T-shirts languishing at the back of my wardrobe, just waiting to be transformed.

The advice is to use natural fibres like cotton, and while one of my T-shirts was 90% cotton and 10% viscose, the other was 70% polyester.

I reasoned that if one design went horribly wrong, the other – if successful – might save the day.

The first step was to choose a tie-dye effect. There are loads of options – you can create swirls, spirals, spots, stripes, and even a marble effect.

Following a YouTube video (there are loads), I laid one T-shirt on to the kitchen table and pinched the middle before twirling it in one direction so that the material gathered in a spiral.

Once the item was bunched up in a pseudo-sausage shape, I bound it up with rubber bands. This, I hoped, would produce a spiral.

I decided that the other T-shirt, the 70% polyester one, would take on a marble effect.

To achieve this, I roughly screwed the item into a ball and secured it with a load of bands.

In an ideal world, I would’ve had more than just one dye, perhaps a selection of pink, purple, yellow and red, and I probably wouldn’t have chosen a green one. But beggars can’t be choosers and so I had to make do with my single shade of green.

Online instructions told me to “squirt on your dye as you please”, but seeing as the dye I had was in powder form, activated with six litres of water that’s 60 degrees (that’s four litres of boiling water and two litres of cold water), I simply plonked my T-shirts into a bucket for an hour, stirring occasionally.

I could’ve left them in longer, but

I was stupidly excited to see how my designs had turned out and couldn’t be bothered waiting all day.

Once the hour was up, I rinsed both items in detergent until the water was running clear.

Then it was time for the big reveal... and what a fantastic surprise I got.

The 90% cotton item had come up brilliantly, the spiralling colours more akin to blue than green, which was just fine with me.

There was even a kind of funky bull’s eye effect in the centre, which was an unexpected but welcome embellishment.

The other T-shirt was rather less of a success, the colours melting into each other – probably due to the material – but it still looked more joyful and bright than it had done in its former guise.

I hung them out to dry on the washing line... until the rain came on... and then finished them off in the tumble dryer.

Trying them on, I remembered why