Important: Safety Warning
This page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes.
In addition, this page directs the use of hazardous substances — such as benzine, gasoline, lye, or strong acids — for household tasks. These materials are highly flammable, corrosive, or poisonous, and the practices described have caused fires, burns, and poisonings.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › Contributions From Friends On Household Economy › Coloring Cotton
Coloring Cotton
To four pounds of rags take one and one-half ounces oxalic acid, two ounces of Prussian blue; let each soak over night in one quart of rainwater, then put together in as much warm rain-water as you want to color with. Put in the rags and let them be in twenty minutes. Wring out and dip in the following yellow dye.
Take six ounces of sugar of lead, four and a half ounces of bichromate of potash; dissolve in a pint of hot rain-water. Take as much hot rain-water as you want to color with. Dip first in the lead, then in the potash several times. Rinse in cold rain-water. Use tin or copper-no simmering is needed. The first makes a blue, the last a beautiful yellow, and both a durable green. - MRS. LIZZIE B., Rochester, Ia.