Reverse or Bleach Tie-Dye - How to DIY - Part 1

The comeback of tie-dye in the last few years (2020 onward) was, in my opinion, majorly brought forward by reverse tie-dye. But what is reverse tie-dye? It’s very simple. While for normal tie-dye you add the dye to the garment, with reverse tie-dye you get it off. So you can reverse tie-dye lots of colours, starting from black and blues but also greens, reds and even light beige, if you like. Obviously, reverse tie-dye doesn’t work with white as there is no dye to take off. To reverse tie-dye you can use either bleach or a colour remover.  Bleach is for thicker, durable fabrics (like denim, thick cotton or hemp) while colour remover (here is the link) is for more delicate fabrics (even silk if you like). Bleach is very aggressive, so consider carefully when you want to go ahead and use that one instead of a more gentle colour remover. Bleach is likely to give you an orange fade on black garments, while colour remover is likely to give you an off-white fade. For certain fabrics (like silk, wool or really thin cotton) I advise you to DO NOT use bleach, or they will get holes or even dissolve in certain cases (like merino wool). 

 

Reverse tie-dye is a bit different from normal tie-dye as you don’t really have power on the colour the fabric will fade. I will give you some examples below of what I have seen during my experience with reverse tie-dyeing natural fibres (blends with artificial fibres will behave differently): 

1. Black fades off either orange (sometimes fire or sometimes terracotta) or off-white. The general rule is you get orange with bleach tie-dye and off-white with colour remover. Although this is the general rule, sometimes this is random, so be prepared for a different result.  
2. Navy fades off to either orange or pink or light blue. 
3. Grey will fade to a lighter shade of grey or orange.
4. Green will fade to off-white or lighter green. 
5. Red fades off pink or peach, or sometimes I have also seen yellow.
6. Light Blue denim will fade off-while or super light blue. 
7. Beige and creams will fade to off-white mostly. 

There are a couple of things you can do to overcome ending up with something you like less than what you started with. First off, you can test which colour the garment will fade off. You can use a very small brush or pipette and drop or brush a very small amount of bleach on a hidden stitching or area inside the garment. Pay attention that is very very small as it can get through. It happened to me already of course. The other thing is, once the dye has been taken off if you don’t like the colour is you can overdye. I did have some wonderful results by overdyeing a bleached garment. If the bleached areas are off-white, you can overdye almost any colour on top of them. If the bleached areas are orange, you can experiment, but you can definitely do purple, brown or red. 

For me, the secret of bleach or colour remover tie-dyeing is to try to not use too much or otherwise you will completely loose the original colour of the garment. Especially with bleach, which is a very powerful chemical that will penetrate everywhere. My suggestion is to not soak in bleach, unless the result you want is to completely lose the original colour. If you want a pattern ideally it’s better to apply bleach or colour remover with a squeeze bottle or brush, and adjust the amount as you go. When applying a dye remover it usually takes a while for it to act so you will not see what you are doing for a few minutes. Let the chemical act before you go ahead and apply more. The contrast will be very visible once the chemical acts so you will see whether you want to apply more. 

Stay tuned for other blog posts about reverse tie-dye. We will try to use it to dye some jenas and sweatshirts.