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Classic
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page 391
cork of bluing-bottle to prevent waste, or putting too much in clothes, and you
will be pleased with the result. One or two table-spoons of it is sufficient for
a tub of water, according to the size of the tub. Chinese blue is the best and
costs twelve and a half cents an ounce, and the acid will cost three cents. This
amount will last a medium-sized family one year.
COFFEE STARCH. --Make a paste of two table-spoons best starch and cold water;
when smooth stir in a pint of perfectly clear coffee, boiling hot; boil five or
ten minutes, stir with a spermaceti or wax candle, strain, and use for all dark
calicoes, percales, and muslins.
FLOUR STARCH. --Have a clean pan or kettle on stove with one quart boiling
water, into which stir three heaping table-spoons flour, previously mixed smooth
in little cold water; stir steadily until it boils, and then often enough to
keep from burning. Boil about five minutes, strain while hot through a crash
towel. The above quantity is enough for one dress, and will make it nice and
stiff. Flour starch is considered better for all calicoes than fine starch,
since it makes them stiffer, and the stiffness is longer retained.
TO MAKE FINE STARCH. --Wet the starch smooth in a little cold water, in a large
tin pan, pour on a quart boiling water to two or three table-spoons starch,
stirring rapidly all the while; place on stove, stir until it boils, and then
occasionally. Boil from five to fifteen minutes, or until the starch is
perfectly clear.
Some add a little salt, or butter or pure lard, or stir with a sperm candle;
others add a tea-spoon kerosene to one quart starch; this prevents the
stickiness sometimes so annoying in ironing. Either of the above ingredients is
an improvement to flour starch.
Many, just before using starch add a little bluing. Cold starch is made from
starch dissolved in cold water, being careful not to have it too thick; since it
rots the clothes, it is not advisable to use it--the same is true of potato
starch.
ENAMEL FOR SHIRT-BOSOMS. --Melt together with a gentle heat, one ounce white wax
and two ounces spermaceti; prepare in the usual way a sufficient quantity of
starch for a dozen bosoms, put into it a piece of this enamel the size of a
hazel-nut, and in proportion for a larger number. This will give clothes a
beautiful polish.
TO WASH FLANNELS IN BOILING WATER.--Make a strong suds of boiling water and soft
soap--hard soap makes flannels stiff and wiry--put them in, pressing them down
under the water with a clothes stick; when cool enough rub the articles
carefully between the hands, then wring--but not through the wringer--as dry as
possible, shake, snap out, and pull each piece into its original size and shape,
then throw immediately into another tub of boiling water, in which you have
thoroughly mixed some nice bluing. Shake them up and down in this last water
with a clothes stick until cool enough for the hands, then rinse well, wring,
shake out and pull into shape--the snapping and pulling are as necessary as the
washing--and hang in a sunny place where they will dry quickly. Many prefer to
rinse in two waters with the bluing in the last, and this is always advisable
when there are many flannels.
TO WASH FLANNELS IN TEPID WATER.--The usefulness of liquid ammonia is not as
universally known among housewives as it deserves to be. If you add some of it
to a soap-suds made of a mild soap, it will prevent the flannel from becoming
yellow or shrinking. It is the potash and soda contained in sharp soap which
tends to color animal fibers yellow; the shrinking may also be partially due to
this agency, but above all to the exposure of the flannel while wet to the
extremes of low or high temperatures. Dipping it in boiling water or leaving it
out in the rain will also cause it to
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