THE HISTORY OF FEEDSACKS, how feedsacks were used in everyday life || Historical Ponderings

[@jackiejames4551]

Feed sack clothes, a blast from the past. As the 3rd of 4 daughters I wore many a feed sack garment. As the wife of a local law enforcement officer and the mother of 6 kids my mom was a genius at making clothes for childern using all kinds of cloth. Her favorite was the feed sack, mainly because our neighbor would give them to her for free. (He was single with no kids, so he had little use for fancy bags.)

[@leannglasman7147]

I loved this historical account about feed sack fabric. I would love to hear more about how fabrics have affected our ancestors' habits and vice versa. You did a very good job digging into the past. Thank you!

[@johnettehaines6291]

My Grandma used them to make clothes for my Mom and her brothers during the depression. I even had play clothes made from a few. And currently l am making dish towels that l have stamped with embroidery patterns to embroidery for gifts.

[@shariwelch8760]

My grandmothers, who were both young wives during the Depression, called them Flour Sacks, and Flour Sack Dresses. They also made pillowcases, curtains, underwear, towels, and everything else you can imagine out of them. But they were happy to throw it all away in the 50's when things changed 😭

[@DawnDavidson]

My relatives called them flour sacks, too.

[@WthrLdy]

Our local flour mill still sold 20 pounds of flour in feedsacking, cotton calico, until it closed in Dec of 2022. I miss it. It had THE finest, softest milled flour you can imagine. I used the sacking to make quilt squares and bonnets, and dish towels for rising dough.

[@susannyloves]

I recently bought, what I thought, was a piece of a crazy quilt top, at a thrift store and was labeled “from the 1950s.” It looks almost identical to that dress and has the black chicken scratch stitches throughout. Now, I want to find out more about it! So glad you made this video! Thanks!

[@altond511]

I grew up on a small farm in the forties and fifties The grain for the animals came in 100 pound bags, mostly burlap but a lot of it came in cotton bags some of which were white which my mother would use to make sheets and pilowcases but some were print bags which were real pretty. Farmers could return the bags for the deposit on them but they were seldom returned because women in the neighborhood had them all spoken for. They would make shirts and dresses out of them.

[@tinawelch3005]

holey scraps batgirl!!! my weekend has been saved by your humor and content. cant wait to binge your channel

[@verandahmeander]

Thanks. This was a truly interesting video. That dress was stunning - and I am inspired to try my hand making one similar. (Just add it to the 101 other projects I would like to make! At least I am part way there - being a compulsive fabric shopper I DO have the necessary fabrics.)

[@gwendavis1623]

I remember getting to pick my feed bags for a dress or shirt. I love the fabric. Sad when the flour mill stopped making them.

[@cdeg1964]

Those of us who occasionally use pillowcases for items are kind of working in the same way as the folks who made feed sacks. I am wondering if the current "quilting' cottons that are available now are what replaced the feed sacks for the mills.

[@mrcanada1104]

Really great work on the history - it’s fascinating stuff to see more behind the scenes of the fashion industry.

[@StephanieCanada]

Thanks for watching! I am so glad I can help.

[@vickismallwood2082]

Oh my gosh catching up on you videos and I can remember these bags. My grandmother taught us how to embroidery on them and by learning to embroidery youvwere learning every stitch you would need to sew with. A must have knowledge to be a good wife someday. Boy did she miss that xall. Lol I joined burn the the bra movenent instead. Not really but the theory of it.

[@sarahrose3877]

Fascinating. I would love it if you did more historical videos.

[@suziejohnson2690]

I’m in my late 60s and remember wearing clothes made from chicken feed sacks and actually the first few pieces of clothing I made for myself while in elementary school were chicken feed sacks. All my grandmother’s curtains, aprons ‘yard dresses’ and much more, including hundreds of quilt squares were made from the sacks. She would often have my grandfather pick out the colors she needed, based on the sample she sent, for either clothes or quilts. I miss that beautifully soft fabric.

[@daralynncameron3290]

Remember feed sack skirts as late as 1958, when we moved into the suburbs and away from the country school I had attended while on a military base. in Texas. The base kids always envied the beautiful print skirts the local girls wore. We had to wear plain cottons our mothers made up from the local Comal Cottons outlet store or bought in town (officers kids). Now think our moms thought prints "declassee".

[@Bright_Broccoli]

Stephanie, this history is interesting.

[@ivoryhenson1285]

This is so cool, I'd never even heard of these feedbacks before. Thanks for the awesome video!

[@StephanieCanada]

Thank you so much! I love feedsacks! I love them so much that I am going to make a pair of 1930’s beach pajamas.

[@ivoryhenson1285]

@@StephanieCanada oh that's going to be so cute, hope you do a video of it. Totally didn't think you'd reply since this is an old video. I randomly found you a couple weeks ago and have been working my way through your videos since. We have such similar personalities, I feel like I found a new (virtual) sewing buddy.

[@aeray3581]

I had a flour sack quilt top that my great-grandmother made. Alas, it missed getting packed when I moved to England. 😟

[@StephanieCanada]

Oh no!!! That is such a bummer.

[@amauryy4417]

How interesting!I never heared about these feedsacks here in France...

[@lisita1020]

Thank you for providing information on feedsack. By the way the apron and pajamas are so beautiful. ❤️

[@StephanieCanada]

Thank you so much for watching!

[@barbaralies]

My mother who was born in 1930 talked about her mother making clothes from croker sacks. These were cotton, not burlap and apparently made nice dresses for my mom. Thanks for the history!

[@lucyflorey9152]

My husband's sisters made feedsack dresses and skirts because of the poverty of the family. There were eight children; their father died young. They were very independent, hard working and savy.

[@ulexite-tv]

We called them Flour Sacks and i sewed many girl's dresses of them through the 1970s, and worked them into quilt tops as well. They made nice pillowcases, too. The real trick was to find several that matched, so you could make a larger piece of clothing, or to figure out a patched pattern that used two or more printed in a logical way.

[@Avotts]

FLEEK means on point like perfectly groomed eyebrows...Hercule Peroits mustache was on fleek.

[@StephanieCanada]

Nice! Thank you!

[@dolliehoraney4216]

My mother learned how to do "Chicken Scratch embroidery" Also called poor mans lace which was a way to embellish gingham feed sack clothing during the great depression

[@aatsista]

My Late Mother who was in her 80's when she passed about 5 years ago when she passed, used to do the same when she'd darn our socks! 😂 We had enough money to buy socks but old habits die hard for a coal miner's daughter! ❤️

[@dawnelder9046]

I have a tablecloth I was given as a present made that way. Very pretty.

[@HRH_Queen_JoJo]

Loved this! More history, please

[@StephanieCanada]

Working on it! I have a bunch of fun ideas coming in 2021.

[@kimcastle4081]

I have a pink flour sack that was never washed, and I love the logo, so I have been afraid to use the sack for anything. Is there anything I might do to preserve the original logo & bright color? Thank you for your fabulousness!

[@chrish2277]

I would frame it behind some glass to minimise exposure to air.

[@aatsista]

My Late Mother who was in her 80's called any type of cotton print shirt, dress, tea towel & linen a flour sack. So her "Flour Sack Shirt" or her "Flour Sack Nightgown" even though she bought it from The Mall like at Addition Elle, Winners, The Bay or even earlier at Sears. 🥰 She was a coal miners daughter as a young child around the Lethbridge Area.

[@sewing4gigi467]

Love it!!! Like Gunne Sax dresses in the late 60’s

[@StephanieCanada]

Oh! Maybe I should do a history on them! That could be some fun vintage fashion to look at.

[@sewing4gigi467]

Stephanie Canada today I was reading the story of the lady that started Gunne Sax before Jessica MacClintock bought it from her

[@shariwelch8760]

@@StephanieCanada I was a teen in the 70's and early 80's. I had several Gunne Sax dresses, including one for my Junior Prom, and another as bridesmaid in my sister's wedding. I look at them now and they seem so silly, but I loved them so much at the time.

[@rabczanska]

People used feed sacks for clothing andvtea towels from 1840's it was free fabric. They started printing designs, embroidery patterns, and such in early 1930's

[@cathyswope5174]

Great info, very interesting

[@StephanieCanada]

Thank you so much!

[@phoenixfire8978]

I’m trying to imagine the conversations that occurred at feedstores when a man brought in a fabric sample. If the appropriate sacks weren’t easy to hand, would he have been ribbed for being under his wife’s thumb? Or would it have been seen as a loving gesture that the dude is willing to excavate his way through to please his spouse?

[@lindamann2113]

When my parents adopted a boy in 1953 he was a baby and mom used blue and white gingham as diapers and when they adopted me in 1959 they used pink and white gingham for my diapers and she also made our clothes and my parents clothes out of feed sacks too

[@sharonwest1602]

My mother made me feed sack jumper in the 60’s it was red with floral design she told me it was feed sack I said What! How can it be ? I was thinking feed sack were burlap I was not aware of the era of the Great Depression until I watched The Waltons in the 1970’s ( my mother was born 1914 I was born 1956 ) ha ha my mother was a great sewer and was Fabriholic for many years love your history channel just found it my mother would of loved it too ( my mother made many quilts in her lifetime )

[@phoenixhexclar9340]

May I also point out that, with the question of how these looked, when seem ripped, it's just a smallish piece of rectangle fabric, not some weird shaped cutoff.

[@StephanieCanada]

Correct!

[@CherriesJubilee]

A more sustainable material would be hemp linen.Hemp doesn't require any insectesides, and about half the water.

[@drdhuddleston]

Just right!

[@StephanieCanada]

Thank you so much for watching!

[@humanwithaplaylist]

Chicken linen love it

[@StephanieCanada]

RIght?! I snorted the first time I heard it.

[@1rahmaan]

❤❤❤

[@lovelasnow]

I feel like something similar was used at some point before because there was a reference to wearing something similar in the bible

[@lynn858]

Well done summary! Watched the youtube video with the author of the book, and the only information that you didn't cover, more succinctly, and with style, was related to quilts - which isn't your thing.

[@lynn858]

I like this video, if people are looking for more. It's only 18 minutes, has lots of prints, and shows some quilts. The History of Decorative Feed Sacks; Quilts and Fashion Lee Ann Proia

[@StephanieCanada]

Thank you! I do need to link her video in the description. This was the early days of my channel long before I understood how to credit correctly.

[@dorothyyoung8231]

I live in rural South Carolina. I’ve seen older quilt backings made from sacking where the labels printed on the bags are still visible. And when I was a child in California in the early 1960s we still saw sacks of flour in patterned cotton sacks sold in the regular suburban grocery stores. Finally, I have friends here in South Carolina who recall asking their fathers to pick out two or three pretty matching sacks so they could make a dress.

[@fortysomethingbadgirls2173]

Levi's use more water. Wanted to know mire about the sacks and designs, not another progressive Op Ed piece.

[@keelyjohnston19]

Why so bitchy? If this video isn’t to your liking go look somewhere else for information

[@patriciaclements9457]

Let's not forget that in most areas, quite a bit of that water came from rain.😊