283. To dye Silk Stockings.—Wash and boil the stockings, if requisite, in soap and water, and rinse them in clear hot water. Put three table-spoonfuls of archil into a wash-hand basin of hot water, in which soak the stockings until they become of a lilac shade, when rinse them lightly in cold water. Dry them in fumes of brimstone, and when they are bleached to the required flesh-color, rub the right side with clean flannel or glass, and iron them. If the pink saucer-color be used instead of archil, the stockings will not require bleaching with brimstone.
For Black Stockings.—Having dyed them, finish them on wooden legs, by rubbing them with flannel moistened with olive oil. Rub each pair half an hour.
284. To dye Gloves to look like York Tan.—Put some saffron into one pint of soft water boiling hot, and let it infuse all night; next morning wet the leather with a brush. The tops should be sewn close to prevent the color from getting in.
To dye White Gloves a beautiful Purple.—Boil 4 ozs. of logwood and 2 ozs. of roche-alum in 3 pints of soft water till half-wasted. Let it stand to be cold after straining. Let the gloves be nicely mended; then do them over with a brush, and when dry repeat it. Twice is sufficient, unless the color 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.
285. To dye Straw and Chip Bonnets Black.—Boil them in strong logwood liquor three or four 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.
286. To make Nankeen Dye.—Boil equal parts of arnatto and common potash in water, till the whole are dissolved. This will produce the pale reddish buff so much in use, and sold under the name of Nankeen Dye.