Tie dye Socks

What is Tie dye Socks?

Tie dye socks are such a fun project to make. They come together quickly and easily, resulting in custom, colorful socks that are completely unique to you. There are so many ways to create epic looks with tie dye socks.

Can you tie-dye socks with food coloring?

Food coloring works great for fun kid crafts like tie-dyeing t-shirts or socks. This coloring agent easily dissolves in water for a quick, fun dying process.

What kind of socks can you tie-dye?

Tie dying your socks starts with getting the right socks first, obviously. Not every type will work well, and it comes down to getting the right material. This may sound like common sense to some, but make sure the socks you choose are white and try to stay away from ankle socks.

Also, stick with socks that are at least 75% cotton, as they will accept the dye the best. If you try and use something like polyester, you’ll get dismal results, with your final product looking faded.

How to tie dye socks from home?

Now, without further ado, let’s teach you how to tie dye socks. It is as simple as 7 steps, and is much easier than you may think!

Step 1) Get the socks wet

To make the dye hold better, start by soaking your socks. You can simply fill a bowl with water, dunk your socks in, and wring them out over the bowl.

You can throw the wet socks in your plastic tote for now, and continue dunking your socks until you have them all ready to go.

Step 2) Fold and rubber band your socks

The hardest part about how to tie dye socks is folding them to prepare for dying. If your browse around pinterest or google, you’ll see all the different ways people are folding, rolling, and twirling their socks to tie-dye them, but you can make this simple.

Just grab a pair, roll them up together, and rubber band them in a way that looks like a cylinder, or a pie. This will be the easiest way to adequately cover the socks in tie-dye.

Step 3) Prepare your dyes

Once you have your socks prepared for tie-dying, you need to get your dyes ready. They will likely need to be diluted.

This will depend on your specific brand of tie-dye, but most are around 2 TSP/ cup of water. To make the dye take to your socks even better, you can add 1 TBSP of salt to your mixture.

Most people use a rainbow collection of dyes – including purple, blue, green, yellow, and red. You can get as crazy as you want, or use any color combination you want, but this is the standard combination.

Once you have diluted all your dyes and mixed each one thoroughly, fill up individual squirt bottles. Shake up all your dyes, and then it is time for the fun part – the actual dying process.

Step 4) Dye the socks

Now is the moment you’ve been waiting for – actually dying your socks! Lay down your cover, and get started.

Start with one color at a time, and start dying the individual pie slices of your sock rolls. Do one color at a time, and be sure to insert the tip of your bottle into any crevices in your roll to make sure everything gets covered in dye. Otherwise, you will end up with white blotches in your socks, which is the indication of an amateur tie-dye job!

Step 5) Let the soaks sit (12 hours)

After you soak your socks in tie-dye, you can leave them aside overnight to let the fibers soak up all the coloring.

Come back 12 hours later, and the socks will likely have dried. At that point, you are ready to start the washing and drying process.

Step 6) Wash the tie-dyed socks

You should then remove the rubber bands from your socks, and take them to a garden hose or sink.

You should rinse them really well until the water runs through clear, or simply throw them in the washing machine.

Start with a simple cold rinse cycle (no detergent) to rinse the excess dye really well. Then, throw in some detergent and give them a proper wash cycle.

Step 7) Dry your socks

Use the hottest cycle your drying machine has to dry your socks after their wash cycle. At this point, your work is done!