oh my...that would bring down the house for sure...

I love hearing the stories about the clothing made from feed sacks and I am sure my great grandmother's quilt was made from feed sacks. I would love to have some to mend an old quilt I wish to restore.

Just brew some tea and soak them.

I'm a sack collector and have found sacks used for flour, salt, alfalfa and clover seed, chicken mash, dog food, scratch feed, horse supplement, and sugar. Except for salt, these bags were large, 50 lbs or less. I have some beautiful (at least to me) coarse but closely woven bags that were 'returnables' which I think were sent to bakeries using large amounts of flour/sugar and then went back to the mill. Many were printed with a very attractive company logo and contents in two colors on natural fabric. The housewife could then wash/boil/bleach off the printing and have a nice piece of goods for whatever purpose--pillow slips, tea towels, underclothing, quilts. I'm sure if you tossed the flour sacks there would be a 'puff' of flour but not spillage as they were securely chain stitched. A lot less spillage than modern paper bags.

The all over printed feed sacks that were used for clothing were, in MHO, more coarse than regular dress goods and according to the literature of the time, dressing in feed sack material marked you as "country." The companies did their best, though, to produce attractive (for the time) patterns knowing that nice looking material could tilt sales in their favor.

The flour sacks I remember did not have labels printed on them. The labels were printed on paper that was glued to the fabric. A good soaking removed the label. And they made lovely clothes.

As for tea dyeing, just follow amma's instructions and you should be good. Let the sacks soak to the shade you like. You can always soak them again if you decide you want them darker after they are dried.

If there is a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store near you, look and see if they still have the cured hams for sale. They are/were sold in the printed cloth sacks. Make really cute toss pillows.

I have some, if I can get into the right box. They are stashed. I intend to make a quilt to remind me of the lady who sold them to me.

I will look this afternoon, and post pictures if I find them.

Where is this mill? State and city? I know there used to be one in Nebraska. Is it still the same?

As to the mill - I think it is in Humboldt, NE. I live less than 60 miles from there. If I watch, I can usually find flour in fabric sacks at the local grocery.

For information on feedsacks, there is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvOM2Q7G2DQ

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iEoF...eature=related

Videos of Gloria Hall presenting a talk for Andover Schoolhouse. (I think that is a presentation for merchants who sell Andover fabric lines.) She gives a good explanation of the history of feed sacks and the development of fabric for the sacks. (They had to come up with good quality fabric to hold the products in the sacks. So, while the print may have been found only in the feed sack lines, the fabric was not as inferior as some may believe. It is not, however, like the quilting fabric we buy today. I think fabric quality continues to improve all the time.)

Printed sack pictures: Two of these are still stitched on the bottom and side.