Friday, April 17, 2015

Not the typical "feed sack"


I've posted before about how much I love finding unusual backing on my quilts.  The most frequent is a sack that originally held feed, sugar, flour or salt.

They actually can be helpful when trying to figure out where a quilt may have been made.  Often you need to be able to read backwards to figure it out!

Like this quilt that has a sack from a flour made in the western part of the U.S.A.

Sometimes it doesn't help at all...like the quilt that has Domino Sugar sacks for a backing.  (This I didn't even notice until I washed the quilt!)

Domino Sugar was sold everywhere in the U.S. when this was made...fortunately I know who the maker is and where she lived!  It is a S.C. quilt.

Imagine how excited I was to get a phone call from a fellow quilter telling me she has a box of old fabric bags that was looking for a home.  Since she knows I love old textiles she called me first!

What a grab-bag!  When most folks hear "feedsack" they think of the pretty bags sold in the 30's-40's here in the U.S.  The bags were used to make everything from clothing to toys to curtains!

The bags I got were a bit different.

They were all muslin and had advertising printed on them.

Some were simple

Others were very detailed!

This Holly one is my favorite...not sure what I will do with them but they do make great study pieces of a time when quilters couldn't or wouldn't go to a fabric store and buy large pieces of fabric to back their quilts.

4 comments:

julieQ said...

Could be that those Holly sugar sacks came from my home town in Colorado. We had a Holly Sugar beet refinery there...thousands of sacks were around there!

Janet O. said...

What a find. I love that saying "The Best Cooks Are Generous With Sugar". My, how times change! : )

Nifty Quilts said...

Those sacks are a treasure! Love that first hexagon string quilt with the lines going all ways. Very fun.

Sew Create It - Jane said...

What interesting feed sacks...I like the Holly one too! So pretty!