Flour sack fabrics.

-

 Flour sack fabrics were borne out of necessity and poverty during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the patterns endure today.

Families were so poor that women made clothes; dresses, shirts, toys, etc, out of the cotton bags that contained flour. When the manufacturers realised this, they began to print the bags with fashionable designs.

The patterns were quite beautiful.

I have bought new copies of the fabrics and, along with US Civil War or Victorian patterns, they are my favourite.

Reusable sacks were a wonderful idea, I suppose people don’t buy in such bulk anymore. It’s recycling at its best.

Still making shirts but fabric is becoming scarce. I will have to face the world soon.
Take care,
Will,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where it all began...

-
Image
 I was born in Melbourne, Australia, and in 1964, I travelled to London; "Swinging London" - Wow - or groovy, as we said way back then. It was a rite of passage for young Australians at this time to travel to the UK, as working holidayers.  It would be easy to leave Melbourne behind, it was an uptight town - the bars and hotels closed at six in the evening, hard to believe, but true. People left work at 5:30 and had half an hour to socialise,  no place for young people who wanted to have fun. Leaving on the RHMS Ellenis.  The trip took six weeks and stopped at exotic and wonderful places on the way, eventually arriving at Portsmouth, surrounded by ghosts - the English were so pale! It was a surprise.  Took a steam train to London - what a place London was, colourful and exciting, Carnaby St, Kings Rd, fabulous clothes, wonderful music, and later, Biba, just people having a fab time. Here I was, in a young person's paradise, I was a hairdresser at the time, but t...
Read more

Celtic with a twist.

-
Image
 I've been working on a new block, it's intriguing but I have figured it out. This is not an age-old traditional block, in fact, it was designed in 2012 by Laura Roberts for McCalls (My second favourite shirt pattern maker - Simplicity is first). I don't think there is enough tonal contrast in the fabrics I used for the 'twist' part, but I have put together a better combination for the next one. It looks complicated and it does take a degree of concentration, something I lack sometimes. It has an interesting method of attaching the surrounding strips to the centre square, a method that could be useful for other quilting blocks. There are a few new blocks (new to me) that I am wanting to try, so the half-finished shirt I have been working on gets pushed further back on the to do list. December is the first month of summer here, the weather has been delightful so far - I hope it won't be too hot - love winter. My lot for today, Take care,
Read more

Over Here! A musical starring The Andrews Sisters, 1974/75.

-
Image
  We saw this show on Broadway on its last night. When we arrived in the theatre, I noticed that there was no orchestra in the pit - this was the first Broadway musical I'd seen, and I thought, maybe the music is recorded, how disappointing. However, the overture played, and the entire orchestra rose from the middle of the stage, glittering and loud. It was a fun show, and great to see the 'girls', Laverne, the oldest sister had died many years before, but Joyce DeYoung was a perfect replacement. Patty and Maxene still had all that energy. Those girls could really sing, they had always been around in films, but I never thought I'd see them live. We saw the show on the last night, apparently there had been a dispute over money, and the producers decided to pull the plug.  After the show, a group of Veterans joined the sisters on stage and gave them an award. Then, the pair sang all their old songs, Rum & Coca-Cola, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy - all of them, it was unexpe...
Read more