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.
[Illustration: BLACK--page 53.]
[Illustration: ELECTRIC BLUE--page 65.]
[Illustration: SCARLET--page 50.]
[Illustration: MOSS--page 76.]