Feed and Flour Sacks Galore

My local quilt guild had Gloria Hall from Palmyra, NE do the program at our meeting last week.  She is an avid feed sack collector and shared the history of the bags and showed many, many examples of the printed bags.  Did I say many, many, many?  She had some aprons, clothing and a few quilts to show too.  I really enjoyed the program but it just got way too long.  Her program lasted 2 hours.  Yes you read that right, 2 whole hours. 

She is a sweet woman with a great wealth of knowledge but we did have to have a business meeting after her program and that didn’t get started until 9:30 pm. so the program was almost an hour too long.   We got everything finished as quickly as we could so everyone could get home but it was much later than normal.  Some members, including me have about a 40 minute drive to and from the meetings.
I learned many things about the manufacture, dating and use of the printed flour and feed bags but also learned how she can tell if something has been stitched on a treadle sewing machine vs. an electric machine.  Gloria told us to look at 15” or so of stitching and pay close attention to the stitch length.  An electric machine will produce the same size stitches all along the seam where as the treadle machine will produce a string of same sized stitches then 3 to 5 tiny stitches then another string of same sized stitches, etc.  The reason for this is when the sewer stops to reposition her hands and fabric the machine makes a few small stitches then back to the larger, even ones after she started going again.  Isn’t that the most amazing thing to know?

Well – fall is moving in, the evenings have been cooling down and we have even had some cool days.  Before you know it we will be starting to harvest the corn and soybeans.  I am sure I will be out helping this year so after we start my posts may not be quite as regular.

Until Later,
Lynn