I have found several tricks to help with making the camo patterns.
1. plan out what you want. I often will draw the camo patten with colored pencils and paper first, listing what order I will do the dye steps.
2. I use electrical tape to mask with. I have found my best results are with Scotch brand professional '33' electrical tape. I have found in in black, blue, green, clear, and white. (clear really didn't work for me)
3. Have a smooth cutting surface to cut the tape on. I use a srap piece of plexi glass. That allows me to place a sheet of graph paper behind it to use a reference lines.
4. Knives- new exacto blades are good. I even found a crafting swivel head razor knife at Michael's.
5. for the digital patterns I used graph paper (five squares per inch) to make templates. Then transfered them to cardstock. rotating my templates and flipping them over gave me many options for shapes.
6. When making masks that us more than one width of tape make sure to tape the seams of the two peices to avoid bleed through.
7. For lifting/positioning tools I have retired dental tools. (just visit you dentist and ask) They work good for ensuring the tape sticks in the inside corners.
8. When putting the electrical tape on your part ensure the tape is not pulled tight at all. The heat will cause it to shrink (relax) and it will cause all types of problems.
I have series of pictures for my digital that I can explain.
Water temp was maintained from 170-190 degrees
ratio of dye to water was 1/4 teaspoon per 4 cups
example of my masking stage. This was my first attempt at the digital pattern. You can see the squares are larger on the magazine vs the MOE stuff. That is the difference in using quad rulled (4 squares per inch) paper and the smaller 5 squares per in paper to make your stencils with.
Starting with a FDE plastic the blue tape covers up what will stay FDE. This will get dipped into brown rit. The 511 vest is used as a color match. I kept it close by to check my colors
Next came green tape. The Blue tape remains still protecting the original FDE. green tape will now save the brown-er color.
next is white tape keeping the previous blue and green in place. After the white is applied this will be the final dye for this set.
After each time I would rinse the part with clean water and towel dry, followed by blow drying. Any pieces of tape that let water in (normally at inside corners) I would use a paper towel and press out the water.
This is a great poor mans project. You can get awesome results with very little money.