212. 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 pretty 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.
213. 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 well in this way, especially if they be stiffened by a bit of gum-arabic, dropped in while the stuff is steeping.
214. 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.
215. TO DYE PURPLE
Boil an ounce of cochineal in a quart of vinegar. This will afford a beautiful purple.
216. TO DYE BROWN
Use a teaspoonful of soda to an ounce of cochineal, and a quart of soft water.