The Tie Dye Problem

by Jon Sullivan - 2025-12-14 - Status

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Several months ago I started working on a blog post about tie dye. I should finish that so I can get on with my life.

As I planned the post back in August I thought it would be about the resurgence of the style, it's new cultural context, and the misconceptions about it being a "hippie" thing. Then tie dye changed, became a problem, and is now a developing situation I need to get fixed. Maybe the original post will get written some day. Probably not.

Inevitably....... Thinking about the societal impact of tie dye all day led me to make some of my own. Which of course led me to get addicted to doing it more elaborate, more better, more fancy, more all the things. Which has me treading water in the current situation. Namely, sitting on the 33 gallon garbage bags full of stuff I've tie dyed in my pursuit of perfection in something I have no practical reason to be perfect at. I've made a lot of stuff. Like a fucking LOT of stuff. Still not at perfection, but way better. I've made a few shirts I feel are good enough I'd happily buy them. But I would put that "wow, I really love that" rate at about 2%. Others disagree and insist most of them are really good. Those people are wrong and don't understand perfection.

Or maybe it's me that doesn't understand tie dye. What does "perfect" tie dye even mean?

One of the things I'm learning is that tie dye is a good metaphor for the quantum nature of the universe. And if we accept the non-fringe science theory that "reality" is purely quantum and our perception is only capable of a limited Newtonian version of reality, then the randomness of ice dyes is very much like the quantum wave function. A shirt will most likely look at least something like the design I'm trying for, but the result will always be somewhere on a bell curve of all possible outcomes. When I try to recreate a shirt I particularly like, it never looks the same. Not slight differences. Completely not the same. So perfection in tie dye would really be any shirt on the bell curve of the tie dye wave function. Which is very frustrating to my Newtonian on-the-spectrum mind.

And it puts me in a contradiction I now need to resolve. I'm making vast quantities of shirts trying to perfect something that by it's very nature can't be perfected. And the obvious option of just making fewer shirts means accepting I will never have the perfection I need.

I have a problem. I am surely too old to fix it.

And it has long since morphed from a quaint metaphor for reality into a logistical crisis. I have enough shirts, hats, scarves, bags, placemats, shawls, handkerchiefs, napkins, and towels done to open a shop. I hate the idea of opening a shop. I'm fucking retired. And, oh, sure, just give them away to friends and family. Sure. Sure. Great idea. I've already given away a lot. Hasn't put a frickin dent in it. I am literally making shirts faster than I can give them away. Can you have one? Of course. Because it wouldn't put a dent in the growing hoarder looking pile of stuff taking over my bedroom.

I need to work out a solution. So far the best option seems to be opening a shop. But that will have to wait. Right now I have pleats that aren't going to fold themselves.

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