e entirely to obliterate them and they often become
very confusing afterwards.

Before beginning the tracing, divide your stuff into four, then decide
what the width of the border outside the pattern is to be; it is quite
an exceptional thing to carry a pattern right up to the edge. Stuffs
that will take a bend, such as all linen and cotton textures, can be
folded in four, like the paper, the folds ought then to be pinched and
pressed down so that the lines may remain clear and distinct until the
tracing be finished.

After dividing it into four, mark out the diagonal lines; these are
absolutely necessary in order to get the corner figures rightly placed.

Though most of our readers know how to make these lines on paper with a
pencil and ruler, few, easy as it is, know how to make them upon stuff.
You have only to fold over the corner of your piece of stuff so that the
outside thread of the warp or cut edge run parallel with the woof edge
which marks the angle of the fold-over.

This double folding over divides the ground into 8 parts. To arrange for
the outside border or margin, is easy enough if the stuff and the kind
of work you are going to do upon it admit of the drawing out of threads,
as then a thread drawn out each way serves as a guide for tracing the
pattern, straight to the line of the stuff. It is often better however,
not to draw out the threads for an open-work border till the pattern be
traced. If you do not wish or are not able to draw out threads to mark
the pattern and you are working on a stuff of which the threads can be
counted, follow the directions given on page 128, and explained in fig.
252.

You cannot mark cloth, silk stuffs or plush by folding them in the above
way, cloth and some kinds of silken textures will not take a bend and
others that will would be spoiled by it.

All such stuffs should be mounted in a frame, before the pattern be
traced and the ground be then divided out in the following way: take a
strong thread, make a knot at one end, stick a pin into it and tighten
the knot round it; with a pair of compasses, divide one of the sides
into two equal parts, stick the pin with the knot round it in at the
middle and the same on the opposite side, putting in a second pin by
means of which you stretch the thread; carry other threads across in a
similar way, in the width of the stuff and from corner to corner and you
will have your ground correctly marked out, in such a manner as to