Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1875 — How to Prepare Feathers for Use. [ARTICLE]

How to Prepare Feathers for Use.

Make bags of coarse, unbleached cloth—one to contain the geese and ducks’ feathers and the others for chickens* and turkeys* feathers. When plucking the poultry, cut off the wings first; and if not needed for dusters, strip off the feathers from the parts nearest the body, and then peel off the feathery part from the quill, but take care that no skin or flesh adheres to any of the feathers. Put thd’bags into a brick oven, if you are the fortunate possessor of one, arid keep them there, excepting when the oven is used for baking purposes—taking them out to the wind occasionally arid beating them with a stick. IJhen you have collected enough to fill a pillow, cut the shape you desire out of bed-tick-ing and stitch it round on the wrong side with coarse, well-waxed thread, leaving a small space at the top to put in the feathers. Now lay it on a table and rub it over on the wrong side with a piece of beeswax, just warmed a little, so that it will besmear the ticking. If ycu cannot obtain the beeswax common yellow soap will do aa well, . ' If you do not wish to use the feathers either for pillows or sofa cushions, they can be put in beds that have become a little empty. The geese and duck feathers make the best beds, but the mixed -feathers do well for cushions. If any of the skin or flesh adheres to the feathers they will have a putrid odor, which may seem to be an insurmountable objection to their use; but if, after a family wash is finished, the bag, tied up closely at the neck, is put into the boiler of soapsuds and boiled a few moments, moving it about with the clothes-stick and lifting it up ajjil down and squeezing it out a few times and is then taken out and hung in the air and shaken hard for several days, when the feathers become dry they will be light and free from any bad smell, and they can now be put into the oven, and thus kept from moths and be always ready for use.— Country Gentleman.