Prepare your work area by spreading plastic sheeting over your work table and secure it with some tape.

Dissolve 1 cup of soda ash in 1 gallon of hot water. Allow the water to cool then soak the shirt. Soak for at least 20 minutes. Remove shirt and wring out.

Place a damp shirt flat on the table, front side up. Align seams at sides and shoulders, smooth out wrinkles and use an auto-fade pen to draw a heart. Here's an opportunity to be creative! You could center the heart on the front of the shirt, but you could put it off to one side or just on one sleeve, or even draw a row of little hearts around the neckline.

After you have drawn the heart, baste along the line with kite string. I like to start at the top center of the heart and baste down to one point, then baste the other side with a separate piece of string. Stitching through both layers of the shirt will create the image on the front and back of the shirt. You could stitch through a single layer, which would create the image only on the side you stitched.

Remove the needle and pull strings at top and bottom of heart to gather.

Keep pulling as tight as possible, pulling the center of the heart up as you go.

Wrap the ends once or twice around the lines of stitching (now gathered Wrap the ends once or twice around the lines of stitching (now gathered Wrap the ends once or twice around the lines of stitching (now gathered up tightly) and tie.

Add warm water to each bottle with dye and shake until the dye is dissolved. Note: Hard water will affect the quality of color you can achieve. For brightest results, use distilled water.

Be generous with your dye application to get rich, blended colors. Keep paper towels handy to mop up extra dye as you go, otherwise you could end up with color combinations you don't want on your shirt! Apply a generous amount of Golden Yellow in the center of the heart design, including the stitched area. Apply Bright Blue at the stitching line, this will blend with the Golden Yellow to create the green around the heart. Squirt Magenta in a random pattern on the other areas of the shirt, front and back then fill in any un-dyed area with Bright Blue. Squeeze the outside areas of the shirt (not the stitched heart portion) to blend the colors a bit more. Place the dyed shirt in a zip-lock bag and let sit for 24-48 hours in a warm place (but not in direct sunlight).

After 24-48 hours, remove shirt from the zip-lock bag and rinse in cool water. Carefully cut the strings and continue rinsing, gradually increasing the temperature of the water until it is hot. When the water is almost clear you can stop rinsing. Wash the shirt with liquid detergent in a washing machine set for hot wash/cold rinse. Hang or machine dry.