SOAP POWDERS.
Take one pound of hard soap, cut it fine, and mix with it one pound of
soda ash. This article is much used, and its preparation, we believe, is a
"great secret."
TO DYE A MADDER RED.
For each pound of cloth, soak half a pound of madder in a brass kettle
over night, with sufficient warm water to cover the cloth you intend to dye.
Next morning put in two ounces of madder compound for every pound of
madder. Wet your cloth and wring it out in clean water, then put it into the
dye. Place the kettle over the fire, and bring it slowly to a scalding heat,
which will take about half an hour; keep at this heat half an hour, if a light
red is wanted, and longer if a dark one, the color depending on the time it
remains in the dye. When you have obtained the color, rinse the cloth
immediately in cold water.
TO DYE A FINE SCARLET RED.
Bring to a boiling heat, in a brass kettle, sufficient soft water to cover the
cloth you wish to dye; then add 1 1/2 oz. cream of tartar for every pound of
cloth. Boil a minute or two, add two oz. lac dye and one oz. madder
compound (both previously mixed in an earthen bowl), boil five minutes;
now wet the cloth in warm water and wring it out and put in into the dye;
boil the whole nearly an hour, take the cloth out and rinse it in clear cold
water.
TO DYE A PERMANENT BLUE.
Boil the cloth in a brass kettle for an hour, in a solution containing fire
parts of alum and three of tartar for every 32 parts of cloth. It is then to be
thrown into warm water, previously mixed with a greater or less proportion
of chemic blue, according to the shade the cloth is intended to receive. In
this water it must be boiled until it has acquired the desired color.