Spots And Stains As In Direction No Silk Garments Should Have The Recipe

spots extracted before being-washed--use hard soap for all colors but

yellow, for which soft soap is the best. Put the soap into hot water,

beat it till it is perfectly dissolved, then add sufficient cold water

to make it just lukewarm. Put in the silks, and rub them in it till

clean; take them out without wringing, and rinse them in fair lukewarm

water. Rinse it in another water, and for bright yellows, crimsons, and

maroons, add sulphuric acid enough to the water to give it an acid

taste, before rinsing the garment in it. To restore the colors of the

different shades of pink, put in the second rinsing water a little

vinegar or lemon-juice. For scarlet, use a solution of tin; for blues,

purples, and their shades, use pearl-ash; and for olive-greens, dissolve

verdigris in the rinsing water--fawn and browns should be rinsed in pure

water. Dip the silks up and down in the rinsing water: take them out of

it without wringing, and dry them in the shade. Fold them up while damp:

let them remain to have the dampness strike through all parts of them

alike, then put them in a mangler--if you have not one, iron them on the

wrong side, with an iron only just hot enough to smooth them. A little

isinglass or gum arabic, dissolved in the rinsing water of gauze shawls

and ribbons, is good to stiffen them. The water in which pared potatoes

have been boiled, is an excellent thing to wash black silks in--it

stiffens, and makes them glossy and black. Beef's gall and lukewarm

water is also a nice thing to restore rusty silk, and soap-suds answers

very well. They look better not to be rinsed in clear water, but they

should be washed in two different waters.