DIY: Bleach Tie-Dye Spirit Jersey

Have you noticed since quarantine started how everyone has a cute tie-dye lounge set? It seems like this trend exploded over the last couple of months. So naturally, I want to tie-dye everything in my closet. There are no shortage of tie-dye tutorials on TikTok and Pinterest, but I thought I would share my experience here. You can either start with white and use a colour, anything pastel is on trend currently, OR you can reverse tie-dye with bleach. This seemed just crazy enough to work, and I was all in.

Bleach Tie-Dye Steps:

1. First, I had to pick the item I wanted to bleach tie-dye. A few years back my husband surprised me with a Rose Gold Spirit Jersey from Disneyland. It was so sweet, he had asked friends of ours to pick it up while they were there. It was brand new and I hadn’t actually seen it in person. I loved the idea of the rose gold, but in person the spirit jersey was more of a peachy-orange colour, and I just have never loved it. Which is sad, because when you spend that much on something you want to really love it. So I decided to make this jersey my bleach tie-dye experiment. I wasn’t wearing it anyway, so I figured it could only be an improvement. It was either a genius idea or incredibly stupid; I choose to believe it was genius, but you can decide for yourself what you think.
2. Wet the entire jersey with water until it is 100% saturated. This allows the bleach to spread nicely creating those beautiful classic tie dye patterns.
3. Use elastic bands to create your pattern. I went with the classic spiral method. Laying it flat on a surface I started in the middle and started twisting in a spiral. I kept going until the whole jersey was in a uniform spiral shape. For the sleeves I twisted them before wrapping them around the spiral. Grab your elastics and wrap them all around.
   

   

   Now comes the scary part. For the bleach I grabbed a spray bottle from the dollar store and filled it with 50% water and 50% bleach. Make sure you are wearing clothes that you don’t mind wrecking. If any bleach gets on your clothes at all, it will leave a mark. I put the spirit jersey in my bathtub so that it captured any rogue bleach. Using the spray bottle, completely saturate all exposed surface area, flipping it around to get all sides. You really want to get it into the folds as much as you can. Even when you think you’re getting in there, keep going.

4. Let it sit and keep checking every 20 mins. Depending on what colour you are starting with and what colour you want it to be, I would just keep checking it.
   

   

   If you want more than 2 tones of tie-dye, you can apply the bleach multiple times. When you apply multiple times the fabric will start processing the bleach at different rates to create more dimension. At about the 45 min mark I slightly pulled it open and applied bleach a second time, and then again 20 mins after that.

5. When I was satisfied with the colours I was seeing I opened it up and put it right into the wash. This is an important step in stopping the bleach. I did a regular wash cycle with a little bit of detergent. I was anxious to see how it turned out so I put it in the dryer, but I would normally air dry it.

I am so happy with how it turned out! Honestly, I actually like it so much better than before and am glad I took the risk. What are you bleach tie-dying? Tag us @stressfreemickey on IG.

Have a magical day!
Heidi