MAGENTA.
Prepare your feathers, whether dirty whites or faded out light colors, by washing thoroughly in hot soap suds and rinsing well in hot water. Prepare your bath as follows: Take about a half teaspoonful of safranine and dilute in one gallon, more or less, of boiling water, and add thereto a half tablespoonful of extract of archil. Enter your feathers and let them remain in bath about two minutes; after which take out and add to bath a few drops of diluted violet, and re-enter your feathers, letting them remain in bath about one minute longer. Then take out and rinse in cold water, and dilute a small handful of starch in bowl of luke warm water; pass feathers through and dry.
If found too red for sample, rinse off and add to bath a tablespoonful of extract of archil; return feathers to bath for about one minute, first, however, increasing temperature; next rinse, starch and dry.
If found to be too much on the plum for sample, rinse off and add to bath about a quarter teaspoonful of safranine, increase temperature of bath to almost boiling; enter feathers and let them remain in bath about one minute; after which rinse, starch and dry. If found to be too light, add a few drops of diluted violet to bath; and, if too dark, dilute a half teaspoonful of oxalic acid in one gallon of luke warm water, and pass feathers through for a few seconds, rinse off twice or more in boiling water; then prepare bath same as per recipe, and allow them to remain until desired shade is obtained.
BLACK—page [53]. ELECTRIC BLUE—page [65].
SCARLET—page [50]. MOSS—page [76].
SEA FOAM.
This is a very delicate shade of color bordering on pea green. Your feathers must be white, or nearly so. If dirty whites, wash and rinse thoroughly; and, if old faded out colors, pass through bleach of permanganate of potash; after which prepare your bath of one gallon of luke warm water and a small handful of starch, and enter your feathers, rubbing them around between the hands. Take feathers from bath and add about a half teaspoonful of turmeric; re-enter your feathers, keeping them moving around in bath about half a minute. Then take out your feathers and add to bath a couple of drops of diluted aniline green. Re-enter feathers, first increasing the temperature of your bath a few degrees by adding hot water, let them remain in bath about two minutes longer, squeeze out and dry in the usual way.
Should your sample be more on the green, you will simply add a few drops more diluted aniline green; and if more on the yellow, you can use less. If the shade to be matched be darker than your feathers, add more of each color in the preparation of first bath. If a rather dull shade be desired, which in this color is quite frequently the case, a small pinch of copperas about the size of a pea will have the desired effect.