Upcycled sneakers - ice dyeing on shoes

These Superga sneakers have taken me on many beautiful walks and to many amazing places, they are some of the most comfortable shoes I own. However, after all those years they naturally developed a more greyish patina and I stopped wearing them.

So there was only one solution to give them a new life: overdyeing them with plant dyes!

Since they are sneakers and a lot of rubber is involved, I didn’t want to put them straight into the dye pot, as I wanted the white rubber sole to stay white. Ice dyeing came in very handy here, as I was able to only dye the fabric.

Check out the reel for this tutorial here!

A day before ice dyeing the sneakers I prepped some colourful ice cubes by making a few strong dye baths and freezing them separately into ice cube molds. I used onion skins, madder and marigold. I only used about 500ml of water for each dye bath and about 2 handfuls of each dye stuff to make it more concentrated.

So when it came to ice dyeing (read the next steps) I used standard ice cubes as well as colored ice cubes for a stronger effect.

I mordanted the sneakers with alum tri formiat for a few hours prior to dyeing. There are many ways of mordanting cotton, so if you prefer to use alum acetate or alum instead you can do that as well.

Start by placing your pre mordanted sneakers in a bowl. As I was dyeing some other fabric at the same time I used one of the fabrics to wrap around the sneakers. Place all the ice cubes (plain ones and the frozen dye bath ones) on top and make sure all the fabric and the sneakers is covered. In order for the sneakers to be dyed evenly on all sides I used the fabric to hold the ice cubes in place on the sides of the sneakers.

Now sprinkle the dye plants and powder on the ice. I used marigolds, black hollyhocks, cochineal powder and poppies.

Wait until all the ice has melted. This can take a few hours or a full day depending on the outside temperature / season.

If you want you can now rub the leftover dye stuff into the fabric, for some more detailed color patches.

I used a trusty old toothbrush and some standard dishwashing liquid to clean the rubber so that it will remain as white as possible.

It took about a day for the sneakers to be completely dry and then they were ready to wear!

This is the sneakers, about 6 months after dyeing and you can see the color is still strong and vibrant. Of course the soles of the shoes are a bit dirty again at this point.. need to get that toothbrush out!

I hope this little tutorial inspired you to give your old sneakers a new naturally dyed life, so that they can take you on many walks again!
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch any time!
All the best,
Nora