Originally Posted by ThayerRags

Yes, they’re very large! I patterned my design after measuring a few of the vintage adult bags that the museum has for display only, so the authentic bags were actually made that big. Of course, many farm wives made their own, so there were lots of designs and sizes. Stores sold them too, but most of those differed in design from each other’s brand. There were also smaller bags that were made for children, but the museum decided to have me make the new ones adult-size because they’re showing the kids how adults used to do things. It’s seldom that the kids in the school program get much more cotton picked than could fit in a small laundry basket, and to tell you the truth, it’s a hoot to watch the kids dragging the large bags up and down the rows with hardly a bulge in the end of the bag. The kids can see how much picking it would require to fill those bags!

Edited to add: and how HEAVY those bags must have gotten!

We have a couple of authentic ones in our shop that were used on a farm just west of town. Cotton sacks pop up at auctions every once in a while, usually still in good shape. (The farmers took good care of them so that they didn’t have to replace them any more than they had to.) Ours have been mended several times, so that was interesting to me to see how they did their mending “back in the day”.

CD in Oklahoma