Vintage Thingie Thursday : Vintage Feedsacks

Welcome everyone to Vintage Thingies Thursday. If you have a love for vintage things, well....you have come to the right place. We have a "dog-gone" good time each and every week!!!
If you are new to this party, please take the time to read and follow the instructions for participating in Vintage Thingies Thursday, click HERE. I try and keep things fairly simple, so please make sure you follow the instructions. Please only ONE link per week. Lastly, if you link in, LINK back to my blog, so everyone can see all of the vintage goodies being showed that day. If you don't link back here, they won't know who to visit......thanks so much.

This week I want to show you a couple of feedsacks I found some time back. The thing about these two feedsacks were the fact they still had the original labels attached. I love the fact that the paper labels were still there. These were not one of my thrift-ed bargains....but sometimes the items warrant a little more spending than normal.

I love the yellow with the blue bachelor button flowers. Both sacks are so cheery and I was surprised by the overall size of these when I first found them. Oh, how I wish I would have seen the day when grains, rice, flour and sugars were sold in pretty fabric bags....I think they should bring that practice back to present day!!

I found this poem on line and thought it fitting to add to this post..and no, I don't recall ever wearing feed sack underpants....and isn't that so sad....to have missed that error in time by a few short years.

The Flour Sack - A Poem

When I was just a maiden fair,

Mama made our underwear;

With many kids and Dad's poor pay,

We had no fancy lingerie.

Monograms and fancy stitches

Did not adorn our Sunday britches;

Pantywaists that stood the test

Had 'Gold Medal' on my breast.

No lace or ruffles to enhance

Just 'Pride of Bloomington' on my pants.

One pair of panties beat them all,

For it had a scene I still recall-

Harvesters were gleaning wheat

Right across my little seat.

Rougher than a grizzly bear

Was my flour sack underwear.

Plain, not fancy and two feet wide

And tougher than a hippo's hide.

All through Depression each Jill and Jack

Wore the sturdy garb of sack.

Waste not, want not, we soon learned

That a penny saved is a penny earned.

There were curtains and tea towels too,

And that is just to name a few,

But the best beyond compare

Was my flour sack underwear.

~author unknown

I found this information on line about feedsacks and thought it was interesting so I thought I'd include it in this post.

.....The thrifty farm wife quickly discovered that this cotton bag was a great source of utilitarian fabric to be used for dish cloths, diapers, nightgowns and other household uses. Manufacturers decided to take advantage of this and started offering sacks in various prints and solid colors as a marketing ploy to create loyalty. It would take three identical sacks to make a dress, for example, and the farmer just might be induced to buy more that way.

It was not hard for the farmer to purchase his goods in feedsacks. The flour industry consumed the largest share of the feedsack market with more than 42 percent. Sugar was next with 17 percent followed by feed, seeds, rice, and fertilizer. These feedsacks came in different sizes, and the quality of the cloth varied with the item it carried. Sugar sacks, for example, were much finer in weave. By 1914, sacks came in 10, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1 pound sizes, although these sizes varied by manufacturer. President Roosevelt standardized sizes in 1937. A 50 pound feedsack measured 34 x 38 inches. A 100 pound sack measured 39 x 46.

I have been to several flea markets where the vender claims the swatches are actual feedsacks. The paper labels were easily removed from a feedsack and even with older ones the label has often been removed. So how do you know for sure you are buying an authentic feedsack. The weave of the fabric is not a good indicator as fabric like this could also be bought off the bolt as well back then.

The best indicator is a line of holes from the chain stitching that once held the sack together. And if you look at this one, it is not straight at all...in fact, both of these sacks had the most crooked stitching I had ever seen at the top of the sack.

This shows a sample of the chain stitching....

I don't know what I am going to do with these, I really don't see myself cutting them up....we'll have to see. One thing I did notice is the quality and weave of the fabrics used in these sacks. I can say this much, there is no comparison to the high quality $10.00 to $15.00 a yard fabric we find today in the quilt shops. Far from it. And imagine, this free with purchase sack made of fabric made wonderful quilts that are so treasured today by many. All the worries of fading, rotting, not holding up for generations to enjoy don't seem to apply to these feed sacks used by quilters from yesterday....and they were free. I can not help by wonder about the hype around fabrics sold at quilt shops...sorry....but true! If we could purchase our things in feedsacks now a days, I'd never step foot in a quilt shop for fabrics again...I'd shop my local market or feed store.....just sayin'.

Happy Vintage Thingies Thursday everyone!! I hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead filled with love and laughter.

Cleaning Vintage Linens and Quilts Tutorial

I have had several emails and comments wanting instructions on cleaning vintage linens and quilts. Because if that, I am going to repost and update my original post on cleaning vintage linens here today.

I have cleaned hundreds of linens using this method and I'd say 90% of the time, they turn out good as new. There have unfortunately been a few times when I have damaged some of the original cloth in old dresser scarves due to the fact that the piece had been folded for so many years that the fabrics were just too fragile at the fold lines and I did not realize that in time.

I did not trash these, as the work is still wonderful, I use these "accidental" pieces to maybe re-purpose them in the future. I'd say that this type of thing has happened maybe less than 5% of the time. So please, take what I have to share with you here and just be aware nothing is ever 100%.....but this is darn near!

 You will need: White Vinegar, Biz and Oxi-clean. (sometimes, I have a hard time finding the Biz, and have to check several stores to find it. My local grocer will order this if I ask, so keep that in mind if you have a hard time finding it near you.)

You will use:
Per gallon of water
1 scoop of Oxi-clean
1 scoop of Biz (Use the Oxi-clean scoop, not the scoop in the Biz) If you are mixing up 4 gallons of water, like I did here, you will need to use this recipe times 4 for it to be the correct mixture:

For example:
4 gallons of water
4 scoops of Oxi-Clean
4 scoops of Biz - using the Oxi-Clean scoop


In my original post, I was heating the water on the stove so it was very warm. I still do that if I am cleaning mostly WHITE linens.  I do not boil the water, I just heat it till it is hotter than from the tap. If I have several colored pieces, I just use the hot tap water. You can do this in the sink as well. Here I have them in a bucket.

My original post stated I usually soaked these for 24-48 hours. I have since stopped doing that. If the whites are really soiled and dirty, then yes, I do soak them up to 24 hours. But, I check on them and make sure they are not already clean and just sitting in the solution. I have found you really only need to soak these until they are clean.

For quilts......I run almost luke warm...NOT HOT water in the bathtub. Due to the colors in the quilts, I never use hot water. I add the soaps and usually mix it up times 5  for a half tub of water. (Pay no attention to the dirty tub....it was going to be cleaned, but decided to soak this quilt first...then clean) Yes, I sometimes have a dirty tub, with a son who works in a messy job some weeks, I don't get to it too quick.....just keepin it truthful! 

The colored water is the gunk being pulled from the fabrics. All that yellow discoloration you find in vintage linens...this is what is in the water. I usually let these quilts soak for maybe an hour or so. I check on it and if the water is REALLY dirty, I drain and repeat for about another half hour. Handle the quilt very gently.

This is a vintage apron I soaked in the sink. It washed up really well, with just a few spots that would not come out.

Once the quilt has soaked well, I rinse gently in the tub and hand wring. Then I wash it in the washer on gentle cycle with a very mild detergent. I add about a cup of vinegar to the rinse water and run it through the rinse cycle twice. The key is to get ALL the soaps out of the quilt and any vintage linens.

This is a picture of linens I had rinsed ( I thought well) before I added the vinegar, and once I added that,  you can see there was still soap in the fabrics.

And as always, I love to hang all my vintage quilts and linens out in the sun to dry. HERE is another quilt once it was cleaned. See the pretty white blocks? They were as yellow as yellow could be, it looked like the blocks were a sand color. Now, back to the original bright colors. This particular quilt once it was washed pulled a bit where the binding was sewn onto the quilt. I just restitched it by hand and it was as good as new. I have never had that happen with any other quilt, just this one and it was easily repaired. Once your quilt is dry, you can toss it in the dryer for a quick fluffing.

I hope that answers any questions you may have. If a piece has rust spots, this solution does not take the rust spots out...only the discolored yellow and most stains other than rust. There are rust removers you can purchase and I have been told that works well, but I have not tried it. For me, if I can get the piece back to the original white and bright colors, that is enough for me.

Good luck with this, and if you are as nervous and I was when I started using this solution, just start out with a small piece and work your way up to something larger, that is what I did. After I discovered I was not going to ruin my treasures, I tackled a quilt and it worked wonderfully.

I always use this same solution to soak and clean vintage sheets. I have a stack of vintage sheets waiting to be transformed into a quilt. The first thing I do when I bring them home is fill the tub and soak them before I wash them in the washer. Then line dry. They clean up so pretty I think and really makes them look fresh as new.

I guess you could say, I have a great love for vintage linens, but have a hard time bringing them home without cleaning them up right away. And when the process is as easy as this one....that makes it all the better!

I am linking in today with Smiling Sally, for Blue Monday...as I think it qualifies...lots of BLUE in this post!