laalaaquilter

Parrothead thank you so much for posting! Those are wonderful! How lucky you are.

I'm attaching photos of the one quilt I have from Grandma. My sister salvaged one back in the 70's and made some repairs, hand sewing in replacement fabric where the original had torn or worn away. From the pictures of mine you can see where some fabric has withstood the ravages of time and prior use (I don't use it now, it is usually stored away from light, etc.) and others did not fare well. Also including some pics of frugality where she pieced pieces together to make it the right size square. The cotton used for batting was grown on Grandma's farm. The back (and squares on front) are muslin?

Not a daring pattern, strictly utilitarian, but I do still like some of the fabric, especially the orangey floral. And I'm not surprised to see a red check in it. I still have one of her aprons...red check, hand smocked.

I took this off to college when I left home in 1980 and the tear at the corner happened then before I realized I needed to protect it better. I've thought of trying to repair but I think it is beyond any reclamation.

martha jo

I remember the feed and flour sacs well. As you got bigger, it took more to make a dress so you had to hope you could get them before the pattern changed. My grandmother lived in a small rural town and had chickens in the yard and we lived in a city. She would bring them to me. The feed sacs had a large loose weave and the flour sacs were almost like cotton today to hold the flour in. A flour sac was quite a bit smaller so we usually made things from them that were smaller than dresses. I remember my first piece of bubble gum too. There wasn't any until WWII was over. A neighborhood man took all the kids across town to where it was rumored there was bubble gum. We were each allowed two pieces. I don't even think I want to remember how long we chewed and saved that gum = yuk!

Dolly's sister

Am so enjoying all the stories. I was born in the 50's, but can remember a time in school when the little calico prints were popular. I wanted dresses in that material, and my Mom told me she did not like that material because it reminded her of the flour sack dresses she had to wear to school. She always felt like everyone in school knew she was a welfare child because of the clothes she had to wear.
I still love the 30 reproduction prints, wish my Mom would have saved some of those dresses.

mades

Feedsack dresses were not my favorite thing. Other mothers did not sew! To this day I have not bought any of the repro fabrics except for one fat quarter I am putting in a quilt I am making for MY bed. It will have at least a hundred 6 inch blocks (blue and white) with lots of memories of our family and our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. This is my project for 2011.
Since I was born in 1923 we had the wind blowing sand that was mentioned on an earlier post and we lived in Wisconsin.
My mother was the chicken caretaker and we also would get some chicks in the spring by the postman. I remember large printed bags of oatmeal she would get for the chicks. Before any was used for the chicks, she would dip out a large bucket of oatmeal that made many,many breakfast on the days we didn't have pancakes! I still love oatmeal, the regular kind and NOT made in the microwave.

lyndaloo

I was born in 1945, but one of my early memories is of my grandmother making aprons and dish towels out of material from feed sacks, four sacks and sugar sacks. She had made me a little apron for my 4th birthday. I wanted to wear it all the time, which caused some problems for me! I have a million stories from the 30's it seems. My mother and grandmother were both storytellers. I had Mama write down as much as she could remember, and I still go back and read from time to time. She and my dad married in Oklahoma in 1935. Right after the wedding my dad's boss told him that the mill had closed down. (steelmill) Mama said they had $40 to their names and made it stretch like rubber for months. Daddy took mama to live with his folks and he rode the rails and worked when he found something and sent money back home. He found a great permament job at a steelmill in California in 1937 and everybody moved out there to the bay area. Mama said the kids called us "Okies" and it made my brother mad. I don't remember it though. We moved to Texas in 1951 and I do remember the kids there calling us "Yankees".

svenskaflicka1

my mom graduated from high school in 1936 , in january. she took early graduation so she, too, could work. her mother had been a working mom since she and her sisters were born--she remembered being put in a high chair in the kitchen of the "big house", along with her two sisters in their chairs, and being told to be good. they had wrapping paper to write and color on, and their mom would come back and check on them every so often. that was their "job"--to be good. her dad was a painter and artist, and money was never too good. he had a habit of disappearing every so often, so their mom worked, always. the three sisters were always very close, and traded clothing back and forth. mom's favorite kind of sewing was never from a new pattern, but being able to remodel and repurpose something into something new and useful. and i remember their mantra: "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!" they all played the piano or sang, and would dance in the parlor while one of them played, and their father played his violin. i was lucky enough to have inherited some great photos of them back in the day...

jitkaau

Feed sacks were/are generally made out of hessian in this neck of the woods. No chance of making soft undies out of those.There were a few flour sacks made out of plain material with the brand name of the mill stamped all over it and now they are made out of heavy duty plastic or paper.The main memory of our sacks was how the kids used to unravel them to make fake Hawaiian 'grass' skirts for dress-up or parties.
I guess the prints on your feed sacks account for a lot of the colour choices from that era.

PatQuilts

I was born in the mid 50s. My first experience sewing quilt blocks was using squares from feedsacks on a Singer treadle machine. Both the fabric and the machine had been passed to my mother from my grandmother. Now I have the machine and treasure the boxes of feedsack fabric that remain in my quilt stash.

I remember my mom making play clothes out of feedsacks for me. She used to talk about how much she hated having to make feedsack underwear for one of her uncles. He refused to wear the new-fangled shorts from the department stores!

Patricia Ann

yes we used feedsacks I remember it took 4 feed sacks for a doublesheet sew together also one feed sacks for a blouse and 2 for a skirt. and the cloth from flour bags were used for dish towels and also diapers. Feedsacks 1 for pillow cases I can remember going with my father to the feed store to pick out the feedsacks I wanted because we had to wait to get enough for us to able to make something. They were the good old days I really love it the feedsacks were great material we also used all the left over's for quilts

RobertaMarie

Well, Sweet, I was born in 1933 and I have a quilt that was made from friendship (signature blocks) given to my mother while she was pregnant with me. When I received the blocks after she died, I made them into a quilt. Some of the blocks had been chewed by mice and some were stained from who knows what, but, I replaced them with reproduction '30s fabric and it looks pretty authentic. My mom didn't have a block, so I made one and copied her signature from one of her letters and added it to the quilt. I suppose she never made the quilt because of the cost of fabric when she was first married (we were very poor) and yes, we wore clothes made from feed sacks, flour sacks, and my grandmother even bleached out salt sacks and sausage sacks for background piecing in her quilts. We used to save the scraps from our dresses and send them to my grandmother to use in her scrap quilts. I still have some of them. The old days were hard, but they were also good, as they instilled love and togetherness in families. Roberta Marie