sewn3w

I am also a '50's model. But i do have some family heirloom quilts made of feedsack leftovers. What treasures. Sorry I can't share pics tho. My computer is cranky and on it's way out soon.

Stitchit123

Sorry I arrived with QuiltE and TinksMom

Stitchit123

they are all so pretty and the colors are still so vibrant

sew_sew

I was born in 1945, my mother was a city girl, having grown up in Los Angeles and her mother grew up in cities also. My fathers family was from rural Texas and I'm sure my grandmother sewed as I remember her treadle machine. No one ever talked about flour sacks but I do remember dust bowl stories. Waking with a mouthful of the grit that blew in, sandy dust in the salt and the sugar bowl. Them driving to California in a car that had flats every few miles and hands blistered from patching the inner tubes and using the tire pump to pump them back up. My grandmother made a quilt for my mom and dad as a wedding present, I have it and remember it on my parents bed. I have another she made for my dads twin brother (perhaps also as a wedding present) I love them because my grandmother made them. My memory of beds in those days is they always had chinille bedspreads, the blankets and quilts weren't visible.

svenskaflicka1

@parrothead: My Daddy put a motor on the treadle machine and that is what I learned to sew on.

my dad and his brothers did the same, only with the pump outside in the back yard. they ran the wires up to the back porch, and installed an on-off switch in easy reach--and, voila! my grandma and grandpa had running water for the first time in their lives!

too bad there was no way to motorize the outhouse so it would have made a beeline to the back porch on command! it was still a long hike in the dark...

Quilting Fran

I was born in the mid 30's. Naturally I do not remember about fabric.

laalaaquilter

I didn't arrive til '61 but Mama (1923) told me all about it. She had two dresses, both from feedsacks. One she was wearing and the other was on the line drying with the laundry so she could wear it the next day. She was the first girl to live past infancy but had 6 older brothers (and that from parents who started out with a two room house and one of the rooms was the kitchen/dining room) and a younger sister a couple or three years later. Grandpa added two more rooms so the girls would have one separate from the older boys. The cooking fire was outside the back door until the extra two rooms were built. They lived in that house until 1953 when some of the boys built Grandma a new one (Grandpa had already passed) in the side yard.

Sandra in Minnesota

I am a 40's model and a city girl. My husband was a farmer and had to wear feed sack shirts to his two-room school house. I have a picture of him with his hands folded on his desk, but can't make out the design on his shirt. I had never heard of such a thing!

Barb44

I was born in 1944. My mom always called them the "dirty 30's." This part of the country was in the dust bowl. They would stuff rags in window and door cracks to try to keep the dust out of the house, but Mom said everything was covered in it. She never mentioned where her clothes came from. She lost her mother in '34 and her dad in '36. She pretty much raised herself and took over the household. She cooked, etc. for her 4 older brothers. Mom was not a sewer, but she was great at crochet and embroidery. The only thing I remember her making was aprons.

My grandmother had flour sack dresses. She never threw anything away. She died about 1965 and I wish I had kept those dresses. She taught me how to sew when I was 12. I still have scraps of that fabric. I also have some blocks I hand sewed together when I was a child. I thing those might be 30's fabrics. They came from old cotton clothes.

From the stories my mom told, I'm glad I did not grow up in the 30's. The 40's and 50's were a great time.

Meme2six

I'm a late 40's model and had flour sack dresses, but regular underwear. I have a quilt top my mother pieced for me and it has fabrics from her dresses and mine in the 50's but no flour sack fabrics.