Resist dyed fabrics The oldest form of designing with colour is resist dyeing. Having perfected the art of dyeing, it must have been discovered that if certain parts of material were prevented from absorbing the dye, it would retain its original colour and thus appear designed. The resist material could be thread, pieces of fabric, or substances such as clay and wax that offer physical resistance. The most common method of resist is tying with thread.
There are two methods of tie and dye fabrics produced in India; fabric tie and dye and yarn tie and dye. In both cases the part where design is required, is tied up by tightly winding a thread around it and dyeing. During the dyeing process, the tied areas retain the original colour of the ground. On drying, some tied up parts are opened and some more tied and dyed again.
The process can be further repeated for more colours, always proceeding from light to dark colours. Tie and dye has a ritualistic significance. Among the Hindus, the thread tied around the wrist before any religious ceremony is white, yellow and red tie-dyed. Tie and dyed fabrics are considered auspicious for marriage ceremonies; the dress of the bride and turbans of male members are generally of these fabrics.
(i) Fabric tie and dye: Bandhani, chunari, laheria are some of the names of materials in which the pattern is created by tie-dyeing the fabric after it is woven. A typical tie and dye design is bandhej where the patterns comprise innumerable dots; another is the laheria type where the pattern is in the form of diagonal stripes. Gujarat and Rajasthan are the homes of this type of fabrics. (ii) Yarn tie and dye: This is a complicated process of producing designed fabrics.
These are known as Ikat fabrics. Fabrics are produced by a technique in which the warp yarns or filling/weft yarns or both are tie-dyed before weaving. Thus, when the fabric is woven, a specific pattern appears depending on the dyed spaces of the yarns. If only one yarn, i.e., only warp or