So my friends’ baby shower was coming up this weekend, and so naturally that meant it was time to tie dye. I figure it’s important to start kids young when it comes to fashion. And what is more fun than tie dye??

Originally I wanted to try a new technique. I had done ice dyes before, but when we got hit with a snow day a few weeks ago, I decided to try snow dying. These two methods involve covering your item with snow or ice cubes and then sprinkling powdered dye on top. As the water melts it slowly seeps into the fabric, taking the dye with it. This often leads to cool effects. Here are a few ice dyes I have done:

I was hoping snow dying would have a similar effect. I had 3 onesies and a tiny t-shirt to experiment with.

I left these to soak in some soda ash while I chose the colors I would be using:

Then I folded all 4 items and got them ready to dye:

The next step was to scoop up some snow from the blizzard outside and cover each item, then sprinkle the powdered dye on top of the snow:

Then you just sit back and let it melt. When it had all melted, I flipped the items and repeated the process on the other side. After they had sat for 24 hours, I rinsed them, washed them and dried them. Here is how they came out:

To be honest, I’m not super thrilled with any of these. They’re all pretty boring. None of the patterns came out as exciting as the ice cube dyes I had done before. This may have been because of the small size or because the snow melted a lot faster than ice cubes. One other tough thing about ice/snow dying is that it’s much harder to place the colors deliberately. You just kind of put them on and they end up going which ever way the water melts.

Because these were less than satisfying, I decided to try again. I got another 3-pack of onesies and settled on two safe patterns and one new experiment. I went for polka dots and a rainbow burst. Here is what they looked like all tied up:

Those I have done many times and I knew they would work. Then I also tried to make a turtle. I traced it out with washable marker on the fabric and then loosely sewed along the outline. I pulled the thread tight to gather the fabric together:

I also tried a different technique for applying the dye. I mixed up my colors in cups and used a syringe to apply the colors to the fabric.

The syringe was actually left over from when I got my wisdom teeth removed. The dentist gave it to me to squirt water over my gums to keep them clean while they healed. Turns out it’s perfect for intricate tie dying! I’ll let you decide whether or not you think this is super gross or kind of genius…

Here’s how I applied the dye to each one. For the rainbow one, I dyed one side rainbow, then flipped it and dyed the other side black.

The turtle experiment proved to be unsuccessful. It ended up looking like a blob that, with some imagination, could vaguely suggest a turtle shape:

Next time I think I’ll try a bigger turtle so the shape can be a little more defined. I’m not too worried about the blobby turtle though, because the other two onesies came out pretty great!