GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR DYEING 
The materials should be perfectly clean; soap should be rinsed out in soft 
water; the articles hould be entirely wetted, or it will spot; light colours 
should be steeped in brass, tin or earthen; and, if set at all, should be set 
with alum. Dark colours should be boiled in iron, and set with copperas; too
much 
copperas rots the thread.

FOR COLOURING SKY BLUE 
Get the blue composition; it may be had at the druggist's, or clothier's, for 
a shilling an ounce. If the articles are not white, the old colours should 
all be discharged by soap or a strong solution of tartaric acid, then rinsed;
12 
or 16 drops of the composition, stirred into a quart-bowl of warm water, and 
strained if settlings are seen, will dye a great many articles. If you want a 
deeper colour, add a few drops more of the composition. If you wish to colour 
cotton goods, put in pounded chalk to destroy the acid, which is very 
destructive to all cotton; let it stand until the effervescence subsides, and
then it 
may be safely used for cotton or silk.

FOR LILAC COLOUR 
Take a little pinch of archil, and put some boiling hot water upon it, add to 
it a very little lump of pear-lash. Shades may be altered by pear-lash, 
common slat, or wine. 

TO COLOUR BLACK 
Logwood and cider, boiled together in iron, water being added for the 
evaporation, makes a good durable black. Rusty nails or any bits of rusty iron, 
boiled in vinegar, with a small piece of copperas, will also dye black; so will
ink 
powder, if boiled with vinegar. In all cases, black must be set with 
copperas.

TO DYE LEMON COLOUR 
Peach leaves, bark scraped from the barberry bush, or saffron, steeped in 
water, and set with alum, will colour a bright lemon, drop in a little
gum-arabic 
to make the articles stiff.

TO DYE ROYAL PURPLE 
Soak logwood chips in soft water until the strength is out, then add a 
teaspoonful of alum to a quart of the liquid; if this is not bright enough, add
more 
alum, rinse and dry. When the dye is exhausted, it will colour a fine lilac.

TO DYE SLATE COLOUR 
Tea grounds, boiled in iron vessels, set with copperas, makes a good slate 
colour. To produce a light slate colour, boil white maple bark in clear water, 
with a little alum. The bark should be boiled in brass utensils. The goods 
should be boiled in it and then hu

TO DYE SCARLET 
Dip the cloth in a solution of alkaline or metallic salt, then in a cochineal 
dye, and let it remain some time, and it will come out per manently coloured. 
Another method: 1/2 lb. of madder, 1/2 oz. of cream tartar, and 1 oz. of 
marine acid to 1 lb. of cloth; put it all together, and bring the dye to a 
scalding heat; put in your materials, and they will be coloured in ten minutes.
Th e 
dye must be only scalding hot. Rinse your goods in cold water as soon as they 
come from the dye.

TO COLOUR A BRIGHT MADDER 
For 1 lb. of yard or cloth, take 3 ozs. of madder; 3 ozs. of alum; 1 oz. of 
cream tartar; prepare a brass kettle with two gallons of water, and bring the 
liquor to a steady heat, then add your alum and tartar, and bring it to a boil; 
put in your cloth, and boil it two hours; take it out, and rinse it in cold 
water; empty your kettle, and fill it with as much water as before; then add 
your madder; rub it in fine in the water before your cloth is in. When your dye 
is as warm as you can bear your hand in, then put in your cloth, and let it 
lie one hour, and keep a steady heat; keep it in motion constantly, then bring 
it to a boil fifteen minutes, then air and rinse it. If your goods are new, use 
4 ozs. of madder to a lb.

TO COLOUR GREEN 
If you wish to colour green, have your cloth as free as possible from the old 
colour, clean, and rinsed; and, in the first place, colour it deep yellow. 
Fustic, boiled in soft water, makes the strongest and brightest yellow dye; but 
saffron, barberry-bush, peach-leaves, or onion-skins, will answer pr etty 
well. Next take a bowlful of strong yellow dye, and pour in a great spoonful or 
more of the blue composition, stir it up well with a clean stick, and dip the 
articles you have already coloured yellow into it, and they will take a lively 
grass-green. This is a good plan for old bombazet-curtains, dessert-cloths, old 
flannel for desk coverings, &c.

TO DYE STRAW COLOUR AND YELLOW 
Saffron, steeped in earthen and strained, colours a fine straw colour. It 
makes a delicate or deep shade, according to the strength of the tea. Colouring 
yellow is described in receipt No.212. In all these cases a little bit of alum 
does no harm, and may help to fix the colour. Ribbons, gauze handkerchiefs, &
c., are coloured w ell in this way, especially if they be stiffened by a bit of 
gum-arabic, dropped in while the stuff is steeping.

TO DYE A DRAB COLOUR 
Take plum tree sprouts, and boil them an hour or more; add copperas, 
according to the shade you wish your articles to be. White ribbons take very
pretty in 
this dye.

TO DYE PURPLE 
Boil an ounce of cochineal in a quart of vinegar. This will afford a 
beautiful purple.

TO DYE BROWN 
Use a teaspoonful of soda to an ounce of cochineal, and a quart of soft 
water.

TO COLOUR PINK 
Boil 1 lb. of cloth an hour in alum water, pound 3/4 of an oz. of coc hineal 
and mix 1 oz. of cream of tartar; put in a brass kettle, with water, enough to 
cover the cloth; when about blood hot, put in your cloth, stir constantly, 
and boil about fifteen minutes.

TO DYE A COFFEE COLOUR 
Use copperas in a madder-dye, instead of madder compound.

TO DYE NANKIN COLOUR 
The simplest way is to take a pailful of lye, to which put a piece of 
copperas half as big as a hen's egg; boil in a copper or tin kettle.

TO MAKE ROSE COLOUR 
Balm blossoms, steeped in water, colour a pretty rose colour. This answers 
very well for the linings of children's bonnets, for ribbons, &c.

TO DYE STRAW AND CHIP BONNETS BLACK 
Boil them in strong logwood liquor 3 or 4 hours, occasionally adding green 
copperas, and taking the bonnets out to cool in the air, and this must be 
continued for some hours. Let the bonnets remain in the liquor all night, and
the 
next morning take them out, dry them in the air, and brush them with a soft 
brush. Lastly, rub them inside and out with a sponge moistened with oil, and
then 
send them to be blocked. Hats are done in the same way.

TO DYE WHITE GLOVES A BEAUTIFUL PURPLE 
Boil 4 oz. of logwood, and 2 oz. of roche-alum, in 3 pints of soft water, 
till half wasted; let it stand to be cold after straining. If they be old
gloves 
let them be mended; then do them over with a brush, and when dry repeat it. 
Twice is sufficient unless the colour is to be very dark; when dry, rub off the 
loose dye with a coarse cloth; beat up the white of an egg, and with a sponge, 
rub it over the leather. The dye will stain the hands, but wetting them with 
vinegar before they are washed will take it off.

TO BLEACH STRAW HATS, &c. 
Straw hats and bonnets are bleached by putting them, previously washed in 
pure water, in a box with burning sulphur; the fumes which arise unite with the 
water on the bonnets, and the sulphurous acid, thus formed, bleaches them.

TO DYE SILKS BLACK 
To 8 gallons of water add 4 ozs. of copperas; immerse for 1 hour and take out 
and rinse ; boil 2 lbs. logwood chips, or 1/2 lb. of extract; 1/2 lb. of 
fustic; and for white silks, 1/2 lb. of nicwood; dissolve 2 lbs. of good
bar-soap 
in a gallon of water; mix all the liquids together, and then add the soap, 
having just enough to cover the silk; stir briskly until a good lather is
formed, 
then immerse the silk and handle it lively. The dye should be as warm as the 
hand will bear; dry quickly and without rinsing. The above is enough for 10 
yards or one dress.

TO COLOUR YELLOW ON COTTON 
Wet 6 lbs. of goods thoroughly; and to the same quantity of water add 9 oz. 
of sugar of lead; and to the same quantity of water in another vessel, add 6 
oz. of bichromate of potash; dip the goods first into th e solution of sugar of 
lead, and next into that of the potash, and then again into the first; wring 
out, dry, and afterwards rinse in cold water.

>From an old book of "useful receipts" from 1861, Toronto 


