Flour Sack Material

Well, this probably won't help you, but I used to see similar material used on feed bags back in the 60's. Seem to remember stuff like milo or chicken "scratch" being in sacks like that. Not sure if that's still done or not. I too would be interested to know where this is gotten now.

Google for 'flour sack fabric' :

results...

HTH,

Beverly

Like most everything else to do with textiles, flour sack material is no longer produced in the United States. Factories shut down, equipment either scrapped or sold overseas (where much if it is still in use in places like India).

You can find vintage flour/feed/sugar sack material/sacks at estate sales, thrifts, and on places like eBay and Craigslist. As feedsack material was a favourite for quilt backs, check sales/eBay under "quilting material/fabric", as well. If you come upon material that still has printing, do not let that put you off. Then as now one can find directions (usually in vintage laundry books) about how to remove the printing without damaging the fabric. Worse comes to worse and you cannot find sack material, but do find vintage sacks, go ahead and nab them if they are large enough for at least parts of your shirt pattern. Then as your mum probably did, simply remove the stitching holding the sack together to make a flat piece of material. Don't worry about the seam/hem marks, they can either be cut around when cutting your pattern/made part of a new seam allowance/will wash out when the material is laundered.

So many people have fond memories of their mothers running up jumpers, shirts, play clothes and such from sack material, am told it is very soft and quite durable.

Best of luck,

Candide

duh wrote in news:44fbbded$0$34521$ snipped-for-privacy@news.sonic.net:

unfortunately the days of cloth sacks are far away. most feed comes in paper (or plastic burlap) if you buy 30-50 pound bags. i did score a big pile of burlap bags from Agway. they got them in as padding on garden fountains, but they were originally used to ship cocoa. some bulk rice comes in cloth still, but it's not easy to find, & it's not exactly pretty, unless you like wearing a label. i still have a couple rice bag shirts. one can sometimes find feed sack fabric on eBay. lee

Maybe Gohn Brothers

Antique shops. Modern spinning machines can't make the soft thread that cheap textiles used to be made of.

You can find "flour sack towels" sold in various places, but the fabric is of poor quality and doesn't hold up well. You *could* buy a number of such towels and make a shirt, but I really, really wouldn't.

The last batch of flour I bought at Bonneyville Mills

in cloth bags, so this is genuine flour sack material -- butthere isn't much cloth in a two-pound bag, and what the fabric is madeof, I have no idea. Perhaps I'll report on it when I've used up theflour. (I'm not lighting the oven until cold weather sets in -- and Idon't bake much at the best of times -- so this could take a while.) Ican, enthusiastically, recommend their white whole-wheat bread flour.(This is whole-grain flour made from white wheat. Most of the breadwe eat is made from red wheat.)Sometimes a blend of cotton and linen has or washes into the lovelysoft texture those old sacks had. Nearly all linen available todayhas been broken into tow -- euphemized as "cottonized linen" --because short bits are cheaper to spin than the long, long fibers ofreal linen. Breaking up the fibers makes the fabric linty and quickto wear out, but a blend of cotton and cottonized linen is farsuperior to either on its own. Near as I can figure, cotton and linenmuss in opposite ways, so that when mixed, they muss very little. If money is no object, you can get real linen shirting from shops that cater to historical re-enactors, such as I have yet to invest in anyreproduction fabric, so I don't know how it compares to my samples ofold linen. My real-linen lens cloth would make a wonderful shirt if Ihad enough of it. Joy Beeson