Like nearly everyone else in the world, we did A LOT of DIY home projects during quarantine. When those project lists ran dry – we decided to jump on the tie-die trend! We tie-died more items than we’d like to admit (with some fails) but we wanted to share the dets for how we tie-died these black sweat suits from Amazon! Yes we understand it is not sweatsuit weather anymore but these will definitely be making an appearance this Fall and are so comfy to wear around the house until we get some cooler temps here in the great state of Texas. Might as well go ahead and have them ready in your closet – am i right?!
You will need:
- Garment of your choice (we learned that some fabrics don’t tie-die well. Make sure it is atleast 50% cotton) We purchased the Hanes Ecosmart Fleece Sweatshirt off Amazon for $8 and the Hanes Comfortblend Ecosmart Sweatpants for $16. We ordered both in Black and we are both wearing size small since they are men’s sizes but a medium in the sweathshirt would have been okay too for more of an over sized look.
- Bleach
- Squeeze bottle – we used the one pictured below from Wal-Mart
- Gloves
- Rubber bands
Now that you have everything you will need – let’s get started!
We watched a few YouTube videos on bleaching black sweatsuits prior to starting which was helpful. I will say, every time we have done it, it comes out differently which is the fun of it all!
- First, start by twisting the garment into a ball.
2. Once you have twisted the garment into a ball – place rubber bands around it, creating pie slices. The number of rubber bands that you use is really up to you. We used between 4-6 on each garment.
3. Fill your squeeze bottle with 50% bleach and 50% water and shake it up.
4. Now, this part is kinda up to you – we focused on bleaching ‘every other pie slice’ with the bleach solution then tossed a little more on as we pleased on both sides of the garment.
5. Wait 10-20 minutes. You will see the garment begin to take the bleach. Some garments take it quicker than others so judge it by what you see. We left ours on about 15 minutes but if we do these again we would probably do 10 minutes to have more of the ‘rust color’ on the black because ours turned more gray so we believe it processed a little too long but we still like the look of it.
6. After 10-20 minutes, remove the rubber bands from your garments and wash out in the sink until the water runs clear.
7. Wash all garments together in the washing machine and TA-DA you have a super rad sweatsuit ready to wear!
8. A few finishing touches that are optional:
- We cut the bottom of the sweatshirt to give it a cropped look. You could also cut off the neck if you want it to slouch off of one shoulder. We decided to leave the neck as is.
- We also put hair ties on the bottom of our sweatpants to help give it a cuter cuff while we are wearing them.
I mean, are we Hailey Bieber, yet?!? *Haha*
This Tie-Die DIY was so much fun and super easy. So many stores are selling these right now for a pretty penny. We spent $30 each max + some good sister mems– worth it in our book! Stay tuned for more posts on some other items we decided to bring back to life with a little bit of bleach.
what do you think?