Part 23
WASHING BLACK LACE.--Every description of black _silk_ lace (or of black Scotch blond) may be made to look extremely well by the following process; either veils, shawls, scarfs, capes, sleeves, or trimming-lace. A black lace dress, must be previously taken apart, and all the loose threads or stitches carefully picked out. We will suppose the article that requires washing to be a veil that has been worn long enough to look soiled and rusty. By exactly observing the following directions, it may be made to appear fresh, new, and of an excellent black; provided always that it was originally of good quality, with no mixture of cotton in it. All lace articles of that brownish black, falsely called jet, are now mixed with cotton; and frequently have no silk at all about them.
In a large clean earthen pan, or a small tub, make a strong lather of white soap and clear soft water, warm but not hot. Mix with the suds a large table-spoonful of ox-gall. No family should be without a bottle of ox-gall, which can always be obtained from the butcher at a very trifling cost. The gall as soon as brought home should be opened, its liquid poured through a funnel into a clean black bottle, and tightly corked. You may perfume it by putting in a grain of musk. It is useful in washing all sorts of coloured things, as it materially assists in preventing them from fading. Having stirred the gall well into the suds, put in the black lace veil, and work and squeeze it up and down through the lather for five minutes or more; taking care not to rub it. Then squeeze it out well, open it loose, and shake it a little. Next, transfer it to a second suds of clean warm water and white soap; adding a tea-spoonful of gall. Into this second lather infuse _a large quantity_ of blue, pressed into the water from the indigo bag, and well stirred in. Having worked the veil up and down through this second suds for about ten minutes, alternately loosening it out, and squeezing it up, but not rubbing it. Squeeze it finally as dry as you can, and then open it out widely.
Have ready in another pan some glue-stiffening, made as follows: On a bit of glue about the size of a shilling pour two jills, or a half-pint, of boiling water, and let it dissolve. After the glue is entirely melted, add to it a quart of _cold_ water; and then make it _very blue_ by squeezing into it a large portion of indigo from the blue-bag. Stir it well, and then put in the veil, rinsing and squeezing it up and down through the stiffening water. Having done this sufficiently, squeeze out the veil as dry as you can get it; then open it, stretch it, and clap it all over. Next, fold it evenly; roll it up in a thick clean towel; and let it rest for a quarter of an hour or more.
Spread a large clean _linen_ cloth on your clothes-line, and hang the veil (well spread out) upon the cloth. When nearly, but not quite dry, take down the veil, and clap and stretch it again. Have warm irons ready. Lay a clean linen cloth over your blanket, and press the veil smoothly on the wrong side; first trying the irons on an old piece of thin black silk, crape, or gauze; lest they should be too hot for the lace, and scorch or discolour it.
The foregoing process (followed exactly) will restore to any article of _good_ black silk lace that has become brown and soft by wearing, the deep black colour and consistence it had when new.
Be careful not to have too much glue, and to put plenty of indigo-blue into the second suds and into the stiffening water.
Before washing the veil, rip open the casing at the top, and remove the string. Afterwards, make a new case, and draw it with a new ribbon.
TO WASH A WHITE LACE SCARF.--Fold up the scarf, and lay it in a thin cambric handkerchief, folded over so as to enclose the scarf, and secured by basting it slightly with a needle and thread. Dip it in cold water. Make a strong lather with white soap and warm water; put the scarf, &c., into it, and let it rest all day. In the evening, make a fresh lather, and leave the scarf in it all night, (having first squeezed it well.) Next morning, make some thin starch. Shave small a quarter of a cake of white wax, and put it into two quarts of soft water; adding six lumps of loaf-sugar, and a table-spoonful of thin-made starch. Put these articles into an earthen pipkin or a porcelain kettle, and set it over the fire. On no account use, for this purpose, a vessel of any sort of metal, as it will discolour the lace. When the mixture has come to a boil, put in the scarf, (still folded in the handkerchief,) and boil it ten minutes. Then take it out, open the handkerchief, and if you do not find it perfectly white, return it to the pipkin, and boil it longer. Afterwards, take it out of the handkerchief, and throw the scarf into cold water. Squeeze and press it, till it drips no longer. Then open it out; stretch it even; and hang it in the sun. When almost dry, take it in, and iron it carefully on a linen cloth.
A veil, a shawl, or a pelerine of white lace may be washed in this manner.
TO CLEAN GOLD OR SILVER EMBROIDERY.--Warm some spirits of wine, and apply it with a bit of clean sponge. Then dry it, by rubbing it with soft, new canton flannel. Gold or silver lace may be cleaned thus. Also, jewelry.
WASHING AMERICAN CHINTZES.--American chintzes, of good quality, (such as are sold at twelve or fourteen cents per yard,) can be washed so as to retain their colours, and look as bright as when quite new. The water must be quite clean, and merely warm, but by no means hot. Rub the soap into the water, so as to form a strong lather, before you put in the dress. Add to the lather a handful of fine salt. Wash the chintz through two warm waters, making a lather in the second also, and adding salt. The salt will keep the colours from running. Then rinse it through two cold waters; putting a table-spoonful of vinegar into each, before the dress goes in. This will brighten the colours. Immediately, wring out the dress, and hang it up to dry; but not in the sun. When nearly dry, (so as to be just damp enough to iron,) have irons ready heated; bring in the dress; stretch it well, and iron it on the wrong side. If allowed to become _quite_ dry on the line, and then sprinkled and rolled up, and laid aside to be ironed next day, the colours may run from remaining damp all night.
An imported chintz, a gingham, or a mousseline de laine, may be washed in the above manner; which _we know_ to be excellent; substituting, for the salt, a table-spoonful of ox-gall in each water. All sorts of coloured dresses should be washed and ironed as quickly as possible, when once begun. It is well to allot a day purposely to coloured dresses, rather than to do them with all the other things on the regular washing-day. If washed in half-dirty suds, and left soaking in the rinsing-water, the colours will _most assuredly_ run and fade, and the dress look dingy all over.
Of course, nothing that has any colour about it should be either scalded, or boiled, or washed in _hot_ water. Scalding, boiling, and hot-water washing are only for things _entirely_ white.
PRESERVING THE COLOURS OF DRESSES.--Before washing a new dress, try a small piece of the material, and see if the colours are likely to stand of themselves. They are generally fast, if the article is so well printed that the wrong side is difficult to distinguish from the right. If you obtain from the store a small slip for testing the durability of the colours, give it a fair trial, by washing it through two warm waters with soap, and then rinsing it through two cold waters. No colours whatever will stand, if washed in _hot_ water. Some colours, (very bright pinks and light greens particularly,) though they may bear washing perfectly well, will change as soon as a warm iron is applied to them; the pink turning purplish, and the green bluish.
The colours of merinoes, mousselines de laine, ginghams, chintzes, printed lawns, &c., may be preserved in washing by mixing a table-spoonful of ox-gall in the first and second waters, (which should not be more than lukewarm,) and making a lather of the soap and water _before_ you put in the dress, instead of rubbing the soap on it afterwards. At the last, to brighten the colours, stir into the second rinsing-water a _small_ tea-spoonful of oil of vitriol, if the dress is that of a grown person; for a child’s dress, half a tea-spoonful will suffice. If washed at home, one of the ladies of the family should herself put in the vitriol, as, if left to the servants, they may injure the dress by carelessly putting in too much. Vitriol is excellent for preserving light or delicate colours.
The colours of a common calico or mousseline de laine may be set by putting into each of the two warm waters a large handful of salt, and into each rinsing water a tea-spoonful of vinegar.
No coloured articles should be allowed to remain in the water, as soaking will cause the colours to run in streaks. As soon as the dress is washed and rinsed, let it be immediately wrung out, hung in the shade, and, as soon as dry enough, taken in and ironed at once. Each dress should be washed separately. The washing of dresses should only be undertaken in fine weather.
PUTTING AWAY WOOLLENS.--The introduction of furnaces, for the purpose of warming houses, is supposed to be one cause of the great increase of moths, cockroaches, and other insects that now, more than ever, infest our dwellings. For moths, particularly, the usual remedies of camphor, tobacco, pepper, cedar-shavings, &c., seem no longer sufficiently powerful; perhaps because their odour so soon evaporates. Still it is well to try them when nothing better can be done; and they are sometimes successful. Camphor and tobacco-shreds will be found much more efficacious if (after interspersing them among the furs or woollens) each fur or woollen article is carefully and closely pinned up in newspapers; so closely as to leave no aperture or opening, however small. The printing-ink has a tendency to keep off moths and other small insects. The papers used for this purpose should be those that are printed with ink of a good quality, not liable to rub off, and soil the things enclosed. We highly recommend this mode of preserving furs and woollens.
But the following method of putting away all the woollen, worsted, and fur articles of the house, will be found an _infallible_ preservative against moths; and the cost is trifling, in comparison with the security it affords of finding the things in good order when opened for use on the return of cold weather. Procure at a distiller’s, or elsewhere, a tight empty hogshead that has held whisky. Have it well cleaned, (_without washing_,) and see that it is quite dry. Let it be placed in some part of the house that is little used in the summer, where there is no damp, and where it can be shut up in entire darkness.
After the carpets have been taken up, and well shaken and beaten, and the grease spots all removed, let them be folded and packed closely down in the cask, which can be reached by means of a step-ladder. Put in, also, the blankets; having first washed all that were not clean; also the woollen table-covers. If you have worsted or cloth curtains and cushion-covers, pack them in likewise, after they have been thoroughly freed from dust. Also, flannels, merinos, cloaks, coats, furs, and, in short, every thing that is liable to be attacked by the moths. It is well to rip the cloaks from the collars, and the skirts of pelisses from the bodies, before packing, as they can be folded more smoothly, and so as to occupy less space. Fold and pack all the articles closely, and arrange them to advantage, so as to fit in well, and fill up all hollows and vacancies evenly. If well-packed, one hogshead will generally hold all the woollen and fur articles belonging to a house of moderate size, and to a moderate-sized family. But if _one_ is not enough, it is easy to get another. When the cask is filled, nail the head on tightly, and let the whole remain undisturbed till the warm weather is over. If the house is shut up, and the family out of town in the summer, you may safely leave your woollens, &c., put away in this manner. Choose a clear, dry day for unpacking them in the autumn; and, when open, expose them all separately to the air, till the odour of the whisky is gone off. If they have been put away clean, and free from dust, it will be found that the whisky-atmosphere has brightened their colours. As soon as the things are all out of the cask, head it up again _immediately_, and keep it for the same use next summer. If more convenient, you may have the cask sawed in two before you pack it. In this case, you must get an extra head for one of the halves.
In putting away woollens for the season, always keep out a blanket for each bed, and some flannel for each member of the family, in case of occasional cold days, or easterly rains in the summer.
Have no _hair_ trunks about the house; they always produce moths.
TO CLEAN WHITE FUR.--Take a sufficiency of dry starch, very finely powdered, and sift it, through a fine sieve, into a broad, clean, tin pan. Set the pan near enough the fire for the powdered starch to get warm, stirring it frequently. Then roll and tumble about the white fur among the powdered starch, till it is well saturated. Shut it up closely in a bandbox, and let it remain unopened for a fortnight. It will then look clean.
When you put away white fur in the spring, proceed as above, (using a very large quantity of the pulverized starch,) and put into the box some lumps of camphor tied up in thin white papers. Keep the box closely shut through the summer, and do not open it to look at the fur till you want it for cold weather. It will then be found a good clean white.
In joining pieces of fur or swans-down, lay the two edges together, and pass the needle and thread back and forward on the wrong side, (in the way that carpet-seams are sewed,) so as to unite the edges evenly and flat without making a ridge. Then line every seam by sewing or running strong tape along it, of course on the wrong side. Unless they are strengthened in this manner with tape, the stitches are liable, after a while, to give way, and the seams or joins to gape open, making rents inside that are very difficult to repair.
TO KEEP A MUFF. Always when returning a muff to its box, give it several hard twirls round. This will smooth the fur, and make all the hairs lie the same way. To prevent the wadding inside the muff from sinking downwards, and falling into clods, keep the muff-box always lying on the side, instead of standing it upright. When you put it away till next winter, place within it some lumps of camphor wrapped in papers, and sprinkle the outside of the fur with powdered camphor. Then enclose the muff, completely, in one or two large newspapers, sewing or pinning them entirely over it, sides and ends, so that nothing can possibly get in. Do the same with all your furs; and after putting them away with these precautions, open them no more till the return of cold weather. The printing ink on the papers will assist in keeping out moths.
TAKING CARE OF PICTURES.--An excellent way to preserve an oil-picture from the injuries of damp, mould, and mildew, is to take the precaution of covering the _back_ of the canvas (before nailing it on the straining frame) with a coating of common white lead paint; and when that is dry, give it a second coat. If you buy a picture that has been framed without this precaution, do not neglect having the back of it coated as above, before you hang it up.
The simplest way of cleaning an oil-picture, is to mix some whisky and water _very weak_. If the mixture is too strong of the liquid, it may take off the paint, or otherwise injure it. Dip into the mixture a very soft and very clean sponge, which you must first ascertain to be perfectly free from sand, grit, or any extraneous object. A good way to soften and clean a sponge, is to boil it in several successive waters, till there is no longer any appearance of sand at the bottom of the vessel. Having carefully washed the picture with the sponge and whisky-water, dry it by going over it with a clean soft _silk_ handkerchief. This is all that can be safely attempted by any one who is not a regular picture cleaner. Therefore, if the picture is smoked or much soiled, it is best to send it to a person who makes picture-cleaning his profession. Many a good picture has been destroyed by injudicious cleaning.
Till it has been made _perfectly clean_, no picture should be re-varnished; otherwise the fresh varnish will work up the dirt, and make it look worse than ever. As long as a picture is the least wet (either with paint or varnish) it should be carefully guarded from dust; the smallest particles of which by drying into the surface will injure it irreparably. No sweeping or dusting should be permitted where there is a picture not _perfectly and thoroughly_ dry. If there is a fire in the room it should not be stirred, replenished, or touched in any way till the picture has been previously carried out, lest some of the flying ashes might stick to it.
When a picture is finished, it would always be well for the artist to inscribe on the back of the canvas the subject of the painting, the date of its completion, his own name and that of the person for whom it was painted. In short, a concise history of the picture, arranged somewhat like the title-page of a book. Had this excellent practice always prevailed, there would be no occasion for any doubts and controversies concerning the works of the old masters.
A PORTRAIT PAINTER’S TRAVELLING BOX.--The large wooden box for the easel and other things indispensable to a portrait painter, when travelling professionally, should be made broad, low, and square, so that it may be used as a platform on which to place the chair of the sitter. When unpacked of its contents, and appropriated to this purpose, the box must be turned bottom upwards, and concealed under a cover of carpeting or drugget brought along with it. The cover should fit smoothly and closely, and be so made that it can be lifted off, and folded up, whenever the platform is again to be used as a box.
TRAVELLING BOXES.--As bandboxes are no longer visible among the baggage-articles of _ladies_, the usual way of carrying bonnets, caps, muslins, &c., is in tall square wooden boxes, covered with black canvas or leather, edged with strips of iron and brass nails, and furnished with a tray for small things. They are usually lined with paper or calico pasted all over the inside. This lining, however, is apt to peel off in places where most rubbed; and is then very troublesome; catching the corners of the tray so as to prevent its being lifted out. To obviate this inconvenience, when you bespeak the box, direct that the inside, instead of being lined with pasted paper or calico, shall be planed smooth, and either stained of some colour, or left the natural tint of the wood. It is best that the tray should have a _close_ bottom of strong linen. When there are only strips nailed across, (like open lattice-work,) the small articles laid upon them are always falling through.
A small bandbox can be easily carried _inside_ of a trunk or box, keeping it steady by filling in heavy articles closely round it. The best way of securing a bandbox-lid, is to have a hole made in the rim or top of the lid, and a corresponding hole in the side of the bandbox, near its cover. Through each of these holes pass a string of ribbon or ferret; securing one end by a large knot inside, and leaving the other end outside; so that you can tie them together in a bow-knot. It is best to have two pair of these strings, one pair on each side of the bandbox.
Let your whole name (not merely the initials) be painted in white or yellow letters on each of your travelling trunks or boxes; and also the name of the town in which you live. Have also your name and residence painted in black on the leather part of your carpet-bag.
If you are clever at lettering, you can mark your trunks yourself with a small brush and a saucer of ready-mixed paint, which you may buy at a paint-shop for a few cents. The more conspicuously your baggage is lettered, the less liable you are to lose it. To make it still more easily distinguished, tie on the handles of each article a bit of ribbon; the same colour on every one--for instance, all blue or all red.
On returning home, let all the travelling cases, bags, straps, keys, &c., be kept together in one trunk; so that when preparing for your next journey you may know exactly where to find them.
A RIBBON SACK.--These bags are quite pretty, and very convenient for a short journey, or a visit of a day or two in the country. While on the journey, they are to be carried in the hand, and may contain whatever is necessary for a short absence from home; for instance, clean night-clothes, tightly rolled up; stockings; handkerchiefs; sewing materials; books, &c. To make a ribbon sack, take five or six pieces of _very_ broad, very thick, strong ribbon; each piece at least three-quarters of a yard in length. Sew all these stripes closely together, with very strong sewing-silk. Then fold or double this piece of joined ribbons, leaving one end half a finger longer than the other. Sew up the two sides as you would a pillow-case, so as to form a square sack with a flap to turn over at the top. Round off, with your scissors, both corners of this flap, so as to make its edge semicircular. Then bind the top or mouth all round (flap and straight-sides) with thick velvet ribbon of a dark colour. Cover, with the same velvet ribbon, a very thick strong cotton cord about three quarters of a yard in length; and sew its two ends to the tops of the side-seams; so as to form an arched handle like that of a basket. Work an upright button-hole near the edge of the flap, and sew on a handsome button to meet it, a little below the straight edge of the bag’s mouth. If the ribbon is very thick and strong (broad belt-ribbon for instance) no lining will be necessary. Also, no lining is required if the sack is of stout old-fashioned brocade. No other sort of silk will be strong enough without a lining.
A LADY’S SHOE-BAG.--Take a piece of strong linen or ticking. Fold or double it so as to leave a flap to turn over at the top. Then, with very strong thread, stitch the bag into compartments--each division large enough to contain, easily, a pair of shoes. Next sew up the sides, and bind the flap with broad tape. Put strings or buttons to the flap so as to tie it down. The shoes, when put in, must be laid together with the heel of one to the toe of the other; and if they are slippers with strings, tie the strings closely round both. These shoe-bags are very convenient when you are travelling.
A BOOT-BAG.--Take a piece of very strong brown linen or Russia sheeting; about a yard in length, and three-quarters wide. Fold it in the form of a pillow-case, and sew up the sides; leaving it at the open or top-end about a finger’s length (or four inches) longer at the back than at the front, so as to turn over like a flap. Hem this flap. Take two pieces of strong twilled tape, each about a yard or more in length. Double each tape in the middle, so as to make a double string. Sew these strings on one edge of the turn-over or flap, about half a quarter of a yard apart. Having rolled up each boot, put them, side by side, into the bag. Pull down the flap over the opening or mouth; bring round the strings; and tie them tightly. The boots can thus be carried in a trunk or carpet-bag, without injuring other articles.