Care of Silk Stockings

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 10, 1 April 1926, Page 47

Care of Silk Stockings

* 'HE care of silk stockings should -*■ begin immediately one gets them home. Sew a piece of narrow tape four inches long into the top of each stocking and tie the pairs together. Next soak the stockings for five minutes in cold soft water, no matter how delicate their texture or how dainty their shade. For this treatment will set the colour and double the life of the yarn. Then hang them up by the tapes and allow them to drip themselves dry, states a writer in an English exchange. When the day arrives for washing them, use lukewarn water in which a little pure white soap has been dissolved. Squeeze them softly but thoroughly, and when clean rinse them well in cold water. Silk stockings should never be soaked directly ; should never be ironed; nor is it necessary to wring them. Every woman knows that suspender buttons are the most frequent cause of ladders. The irritating looseness that middle-aged stockings acquire forces one to take a fresh hitch on the top and fasten the suspender lower. This stretches the stocking to straining point and encourages it to ladder at the slightest additional strain. A GAIN the cold water cure is ■LX- the best preventative, because thus soaking the silk stockings causes the yarn to resume its natural position and elasticity so that

the stocking fits more snugly to the leg and the suspenders may be worn looser. Dancers who have to buy long, expensive trunk hose use this soaking method to make their stockings fit neatly and closely to the leg and prevent their stretching. Regulate the suspender to every fresh pair of stockings, for lengths are seldom quite the same, and on no account fasten the suspender button below the stocking’s top hem. The neatest and best way of mending ladders is to pick up the bars with a steel crochet hook, but for those whose eyesight forbids such methods there are shops that make a speciality of ladder mending at a reasonable charge. For the impatient there remains the useful if unsightly way of sewing up the edges of the ladders. No sensible person would use cotton for mending silk stockings, for the hard smooth thread would probably break the delicate loops and result in a couple of companion parallel ladders. Having got silk the exact shade of the stockings, the first thing to do is to secure the slipping loop. A fine needle should be used, and the silk thread carried down the ladder for a few inches before picking up the loop that has slipped. Sew neatly with close stitches, taking only two of the side loops at each side and fasten off securely. This method applies to a stocking leg and should never be used on the ankle. ■