My mother would send me to go with my father when he went to buy the feed for the chickens, and I would choose the bags. I would get 3 or 4 the same so that there would be enough for a dress. Later the flour sack would also be in print and because we made a lot of tortillas my dad would buy 100lb sacks. About 10 years ago I donated about 25 sacks that I still had.

Well, I'm guessing the fabric would be pretty hard wearing....couldn't imagine today's fabric holding up under the stress of containing animal feed, being loaded and unloaded umpteen times and tossed around. Interesting thread.

Thanks everyone for the interesting information about feed sacks. I have a handmade quilt made by my husbands dgm, circa 1920. They always told me it was made from flour sacks. I was a city girl, but poor...lived in the projects after ww2. So we never saw anything like sacks for feed or flour. If someone came to school or church wearing sacks, I sure wouldn't know! I learn so much on quiltingboard.

It is early Sunday morning and I getting such a sweet history lesson on what REAL life was like in the 30-40's. I know that my grandmother saved feed sacks because in the mid-fifties she made me a dress that I still long to have back. Simple little girl dress, cream, likely muslin, bodice with a little round collar and a full skirt of yellow printed feed sack. I keep looking in the "re-production print" sections of any store I stop at in hopes of finding this fabric. No luck yet but it holds a deep memory for me of my grandmother and her efforts to bless me with a charming little garment for school.

Thank you everyone for your feed sack stories. I am richer because of your family tales.

Don't be afraid to use feedsacks. They wear like iron. We had quilts, sheets, underwear, dresses, tea towels, pillowcases, etc, etc made from feedsacks. They were the basic fabric at our house and my mom could get a near pinafore out of only two feedsacks. I had several.

Feed sacks were - for many - the best they could afford - in that time frame!

I wonder how much the cost of the sacks added to the cost of the feed.
And how much "better" using paper is now?

I had similar experiences...my grandmother and mother. I remember going to the grist mill with my grandfather in a horse drawn wagon and picking up the bags of flour and grain and seeing all the bags with cloth designs

Thanks Skylark53 for the interesting picture.

I have worn clothes and slept under many quilts made from feed sacks. they lasted for ever. my mom carded the cotton out of the cotton fields for the batting .

I grew up wearing dresses and blouses made from printed flour sacks! I was always excited if they let me choose the ones we bought. :-)