Wide unbleached sheeting was also used for making dresses, and when dyed a deep solid color and tastefully made up the effect was quite handsome. On one occasion, when Mr. G—— had been fortunate in getting a bale of unbleached factory sheeting, Mrs. G—— gave to me, to her two oldest daughters, and a niece of hers, who was as one of the family, enough of the sheeting to make each one of us a dress. We had to hie us to the woods for coloring matter, to dye as each one pleased.
I have often joined with neighbors, when school hours for the day were over, in gathering roots, barks, leaves, twigs, sumach berries, and walnuts, for the hulls, which dyed wool a beautiful dark brown. Such was the variety we had to choose from, to dye our cloth and thread. We used to pull our way through the deep tangled woods, by thickly shaded streams, through broad fields, and return laden with the riches of the Southern forest! Not infrequently clusters of grapes mingled with our freight of dyes. The pine-tree’s roots furnished a beautiful dye, approximating very closely to garnet, which color I chose for the sheeting for my dress. A strong decoction of the roots of the pine-tree was used. Copperas of our own production was used as the mordant. A cask or some small vessel was set convenient to the dwelling-house and partly filled with water, in which a small quantity of salt and vinegar had been mingled; then pieces of rusty, useless iron, such as plows too much worn to be used again, rusty broken rails, old horse-shoes, and bits of old chains were picked up and cast into the cask. The liquid copperas was always ready, and a very good substance we found it to fix colors in cloth or thread. The sheeting for the dress was folded smoothly and basted slightly so as to keep the folds in place. It was first thoroughly soaked in warm soapsuds, then dipped into the dye, and afterwards into a vessel containing liquid lye from wood-ashes; then it went again into the dye, then the lye, and so on till the garnet color was the required shade. By varying the strength of the solution any shade desirable could be obtained. My garnet-colored dress of unbleached sheeting was often mistaken for worsted delaine.
Many of the planters in southern Alabama began to grow wool on quite a large scale, as the war went on and no woolen goods could be had. All the woolen material that could be manufactured at the cotton mills was used to clothe our soldiers, so that all the varied kinds of woolen goods that hitherto had been used with us had now to be of home hand-make. In this we achieved entire success. All kinds of woolen goods—flannels both colored and white, plaids of bright colors, which we thought equal to the famed Scotch plaids; balmorals, which were then in fashion—were woven, with grave or gay borders as suited our fancy. Woolen coverlets and blankets were also manufactured. The woolen blankets were at first woven with the warp of cotton thread, but a woman of our settlement improved on that by weaving some blankets on the common house loom, both warp and woof of wool, spun by her own hands. The borders were bright red and blue, of texture soft and yielding; they were almost equal to those woven at a regular woolen mill. The process of weaving all-wool blankets with warp and woof hand-spun was quite tedious, yet it was accomplished. Various kinds of twilled woolen cloth were also woven. In weaving coverlets, the weaver had the “draught” before her, to guide her in tramping the pedals and throwing the design of flower, vine, leaf, square, or diamond on the right side. Beautiful carpets also were made on the same plan as coverlets.
Many of the planters, after the shearing of their sheep, used to carry the wool to the nearest cotton mill and have it carded into rolls, to facilitate the making of woolen cloth; and often large quantities of lint cotton were hauled to the factories, to be carded into rolls to be spun at home. But carding rolls by common hand-cards was a rather slow and tiresome process.
IV.
There was some pleasant rivalry as to who should be the most successful in producing the brightest and clearest tinge of color on thread or cloth. Most of the women of southern Alabama had small plats of ground for cultivating the indigo bush, for making “indigo blue,” or “indigo mud,” as it was sometimes called. The indigo weed also grew abundantly in the wild state in our vicinage. Those who did not care to bother with indigo cultivation used to gather, from the woods, the weed in the wild state when in season. Enough of the blue was always made either from the wild or cultivated indigo plant. We used to have our regular “indigo churnings,” as they were called. When the weed had matured sufficiently for making the blue mud, which was about the time the plant began to flower, the plants were cut close to the ground, our steeping vats were closely packed with the weed, and water enough to cover the plant was poured in. The vat was then left eight or nine days undisturbed for fermentation, to extract the dye. Then the plant was rinsed out, so to speak, and the water in the vat was churned up and down with a basket for quite a while; weak lye was added as a precipitate, which caused the indigo particles held in solution to fall to the bottom of the vat; the water was poured off, and the “mud” was placed in a sack and hung up to drip and dry. It was just as clear and bright a blue as if it had passed through a more elaborate process.
The woods, as well as being the great storehouse for all our dye-stuffs, were also our drug stores. The berries of the dogwood-tree were taken for quinine, as they contained the alkaloid properties of cinchona and Peruvian bark. A soothing and efficacious cordial for dysentery and similar ailments was made from blackberry roots; but ripe persimmons, when made into a cordial, were thought to be far superior to blackberry roots. An extract of the barks of the wild cherry, dogwood, poplar, and wahoo trees was used for chills and agues. For coughs and all lung diseases a syrup made with the leaves and roots of the mullein plant, globe flower, and wild-cherry tree bark was thought to be infallible. Of course the castor-bean plant was gathered in the wild state in the forest, for making castor oil.