The work upon such a piece should proceed in the following manner. First the cloth should be prepared for dyeing in the manner indicated in the chapter on dyeing. The centers of the ties should next be located. Sometimes the cloth is merely gathered at each center and tied, but with larger patterns it is often folded in some definite way. The border in this piece was made by gathering across the entire piece and tying.
If the tying is very tight the outlines will be sharp. With a little looseness in the ties the color will creep in, the results of which are often very beautiful. A tie that is too loose, however, is in danger either of coming off in the dye-bath, or it may allow the color to penetrate to the extent of destroying the design.
Too prolonged treatment in the dye-bath, or dyeing at too high a temperature, may cause too much penetration of color into the tied spaces.
A TIE-DYED BORDER
PORTION OF A TIE-DYED SCARF
On page [113] is shown a portion of a silk scarf. In this case the white cloth was gathered at the respective centers, without any definite plan of folding, and tied rather tightly with a few winds of string [!-- original location of illustration --] about an inch or more from the center. The piece was then dyed a soft gray yellow. Then more winding was done so as to leave only the tips exposed. The next dye-bath was a soft blue somewhat stronger than the yellow. The color qualities are beautiful. The border shows the penetration of the blue color in a very happy manner.