feed sacks.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Thrilled... I was just given a beautiful arrangement of replica *feed sack fabrics from a friend who wasn't sure what to do with them and wanted them to find a home. So of course the first thing I did was fold them all into 4x4 squares, arrange them by color and admire their loveliness.

*Farmers have been using cloth bags for grain, seed and feed ever since cloth was available. In the early days, homespun linen was hand sewn into bags for the grain that was kept for use in the home, and for next year's planting. The sacks were considered valuable personal property, and were usually stitched or stenciled with names or initials to identify the owner.

After the invention of the sewing machine in the mid 19th century, feed sacks became a commercially viable product, and began to be mass produced by the late 1800's. As the economy shifted from a rural, agrarian economy to a more urban, industrialized one, more and more of these sacks were used to ship and store grain, feed and flour products. At first, the users would bring back the emptied sack to their feed supplier to be refilled, but it was easier for the miller to prefill the sacks, so the empty sacks found other uses in the home as towels, linens or clothing. {rickrack.com}

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