My grandmother made dresses for my cousin and I from feedsacks. She would choose enough bags with the same print so our dresses would be alike.

Currently, I find Cooper's Mill flour in sacking - it is a company local to our area. I understand there is a company out of Montana that also is using fabric. Haven't heard of others.

We are fortunate to have Gloria Hall in our area, as well. She spoke to our guild about feed sacks, displaying several of the things she has collected. She also has a line of fabric out now that reproduce the feed sack prints.

So how do I tea dye things? just make some tea and put it in a plastic tub with the flour sacks? How long do you keep it in there?

There was a joke going around some time ago about a mother making underwear for her son out of flour sacks and every time he f**ted it smelled like fresh baked biscuits.

I remember well going to our neighbors, who raised turkeys, and buying empty feed sacks, all stitching removed and laundered and ironed ready for use. They cost 25 cents and measured a little over a yard. 2 or 3 made me a dress. They were very colorful and I liked being able to walk over the hill thru our fields to their house to make my purchases. Memories!!! This was over 60 years ago. Ruth

Until it reaches the shade you like.

Yes, that's pretty much it. How long you leave them in depends on how dark you want the fabric. I would start with 1/2 -1 hour.

You can get some good tutorials by googling "How to tea dye fabric." The method I have used is to make some very strong tea like you would make for starting iced tea. Use maybe half a dozen tea bags or a couple family size tea bags and add to a couple quarts of very hot water. Let it steep until it turns very dark. Wet whatever you want to tea dye with clear water first, wring it out til just damp, then immerse it on the strong tea. This makes it dye evenly. You may want to stir it around a bit, too. Lift the fabric up and look at it as you stir it. When it appears to be the color you want, its NOT ready yet. ;o) Let it get darker because some of the tea will rinse out and it will also dry several shades lighter. When you think its dark enough, remove and rinse in cold water til the water runs clear. (Save the tea in case you want to redo it.) I dry mine in the dryer. Take some white muslin and do a test batch and you will get the idea. Check out some of the tutorials, too.
... If you want to tea dye stuff so its sort of blotchy (to make it more antique looking) you can put it into the tea without dampening it first, and you can dab the leftover tea bag onto the fabric and make darker spots, as well. This method works well for making antique looking cloth dolls,etc. (I wear rubber gloves so I can get in there and swish it around.) Enjoy.

any pictures of these flower sacks

When you're doing the tea or coffee dyeing and want the more antique look, I dipped the towels in the tea for about 1/2 hr, rinsed and allowed to dry. After the towels were dry, I took a clean 2" paint brush dipped in the tea and dab on a paper towel to take up the excess liquid then brushed tea over the towel. Allowed the towel to air dry. This gave a more stained appearance instead of overall aged appearance.
Something that I found with the tea, and maybe this might depend on what type of tea is used, but I used ordinary tea bag tea but the tea-dyed towels had a pinkish cast to them where those dyed with coffee had more of brownish shade. My husband says when he was a Boy Scout, his grandmother dipped his BS shirts in strong coffee to help keep the khaki color. Chris