Here are a rabbit chow bag and a seed bag. Because the colors are badly faded I decided to embroider over the patterns. The housewife would ordinarily remove the printing so the bags could be put to other uses.

Greenheron, I love your feedsacks! Thanks for posting them.

I used feed sacks with a border of square dancers on them to make a gathered skirt in home ec way back when. We couldn't afford fabric.

mltquilt

I'm wondering if you are talking about the "flour sack" towels that we can still buy, which are white, or are you talking about the feed sacks made with printed cotton fabric from years ago? I haven't seen anyone use the flour sack toweling for quilts. Has anyone used them for quilting? They have a bit of texturing to them - at least all those I've seen do.

I would agree - the flour sack towels available now are great for wiping dishes, very absorbent - but I would not use them in quilts. The weave is too open. I have been referring to fabric used by a local flour mill used to package their flour, and to the vintage sacks sometimes found at auctions or for sale by quilters/collectors.

I don't like messing with the tea bags, I just use instant coffee granules..

Here is a quilt that I need to restore and I am hoping that flour sacks are suitable.

Every summer Granma made me shorts and tops to match out of flour sacks. Good memories.
I loved going with her to the store to choose which one I wanted.

Thank you so much for posting these pics, I had always wondered what type of prints they were!

My mother made my underpants from Gold Medal flour sacks during the Depression. Their motto was "Eventually, Why not now?" One time I had that across the seat of my underpants!! But remember I am a great grandmother and 85 so only the smiles remain today and not the embarrassments!!

This is a very informative video. I have a Purina sack with the fighting roosters but it's faded, not bright like the one in her collection.

ROFLOL :)

So did mine. Then when we outgrew them she made quilts with them.

I believe flour came in 25lb sacks. Can't remember for sure, but I know they were pretty large. We only made a major shopping trip to town once a month. We kids were allowed to go to the movies while the Folks shopped. Cost of a movie was a whopping 7cents per kid! Dad would pick up anything we ran out of when he went to the gin, or hauling cattle to sale barn. This was a time of rationing, so we were pretty careful about how fast we used some things up.

Many of the calico prints that we used so much of in our quilts are reproductions of flour sack designs that feed companys used to entice husbands to buy their brand, knowing the wives would put them to good use - it worked. I understand many husbands were sent back to the feed store, because they bought sacks that didn't match (even then we were a bossy group, I love it) LOL

One of our friends worked in his Fathers feed store with his brothers, He has told of having to move 20 bags of chicken feed to find some lady enough matching fabric to make a garment. He was glad when they put the feed in paper sacks.

I have never bought flour in cloth sacks, only the 25lb paper bags. I remember early in my marriage my father commenting on the amount of flour I was using and he said the bag didn't have 25lbs, it had 24lbs. I showed him the label with 25lbs. He remembered flour in cloth bags that did not have 25 pounds. The measurement had to do with the number of pounds packed in barrels!! He was born in 1912 and lived through some tough times in a large family. I didn't understand then and I still don't but I believe him.

I looked around and see what I found from the State of Mississippi Code Weights & Measures:


Flour, in barrels, per barrel ........................... 196 pounds net
Flour, in half barrels ................................... 98 pounds net
Flour, in one-fourth barrel sacks ........................ 48 pounds net
Flour, in one-eighth barrel sacks ........................ 24 pounds net
Looks like Daddy knew what he was talking about.

He definitely did. I think it was sometime around WWII that they standardized measurements by the pounds (as in - 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 lbs.) rather than by what what came in a barrel.

When I was just a girl in the 30's my mother made dresses and panties to match for all four of us girls, My dad was a miner in the foothills of Calif, working at a gold mine for $30.00 a month, so mama made our clothes from the flour sacks that the flour came in, I have a pillow case full of the old original flour sack material , plan on making a log cabin quilt out of it as well as using muslin for it too :lol:

I dyed my prom shoes in a sink of hot water and instant coffee grounds!

I grew up on a chicken farm. Mama made our clothes from the feedsacks. I wore feedsack "drawers' till I started school. Mama's aunt bought me & my sister store bought panties.My brother got store bought underwear too.I found an old quilt top made with feedsacks & washed feedsacks for the back, at a yard sale.Sun bonnet Sue pattern.

I have some pieces of fabrics you might be able to use. They are some I saved from old aprons and some spokes from some antique Dresden Plate blocks that I bought on ebay. You can also purchase some small checked cotton gingham and use that for some. I think Joanns only carries the checked gingham in a cotton,blend but think I have seen 100% cotton at Hobby Lobby and online. Please send me an aside if you want to share a bit of the old fabrics I have.
I think that quilt is absolutely beautiful.

This is a great thread...thanks for all the stories

Do you ever go to ebay? Look up flour/feed sacks. There usually are tons of pictures of sacks,either opened or unopened for sale.

When my Aunt was a girl way back in the 20's she died her hair with coffee and tea, :?

I remember going to the feed store with my father and picking out the sacks that I liked. It took two sacks to make a gathered skirt!

My DM said her 'old-maid' great aunts rinsed their hair with tea after every shampoo, looked perfectly natural and never showed a grey hair. ;)

I mixed a home brew "suntan lotion" with instant tea one summer. It was the only summer I ever got a tan. LOL
The tea dyed my skin just enough to look like a natural tan. It didn't protect against sunburns.

You might use some of the reproduction prints in that dresdan plate you are working on. I like the antique green. I think Keepsake Quilting has some of the reproduction prints and some solids. Post a photo when you get it finished.

if you want a variety of colors and dying techniques go to ritdye,com - I happened on that site by accident and got so excited when I saw all info they had - have been making some of my own batiks

I found out the hard way that THIS - what you suggest above - is a critical step in the dyeing process to ensure the dye "sticks" rathers than runs out with the rinse water after a project is finished. Oy.

Donna,

Let me know what you think.

Ellen

Coffee makes a darker more durable color.
You might look into dyes on the internet, before you finally decide. Stamping designs on them is another possibility.
Also there are ways to paint them and then quilt around the painted patterns.

I too remember going to the feedstore with daddy, picking out my new dress fabric.Those were the days!

Someone asked me for contact info on Cooper's.

I found this:

http://www.coopersbestflour.com

They have a 'contact us' tab with information on ordering. However, I did not notice any flour on their products page. You would need to contact them and ask.

I saw some in Wal-Mart so they are around.

I found some flour sacks with the stitching still in them in the fabrics I'd saved after my mother's death (in 1988). Our basement had water on the floor this spring. I had to wash the fabrics I'd left in boxes on the floor, and found these. I was elated. They are being saved for something special...don't know what, yet.