A quilt historian chronicles the fascinating yet untold story of feedsack quilts made in America during the Great Depression and WWII. Feedsacks weren’t meant for anything more than their name implies until hard times changed the way people looked at available resources. In the 1930s and 40s, quilters facing poverty and fabric shortages found that these cotton bags could be repurposed into something beautiful. Manufacturers capitalized on the trend by designing their bags with stylish patterns, like the iconic gingham. In Feedsack Secrets, quilt historian Gloria Nixon shares the story of the patterned feedsack with research culled from old farm periodicals, magazines and newspapers. Along the way, she reveals how women met for sack-and-snack-club fabric swaps; there were restrictions on jacket lengths, hem depths and the sweep of a skirt; and feedsack prints and bags played a part in political contests, even accurately predicting that Truman would win the 1948 presidential election.

Edie McGinnis explores the history of feed sacks, discusses their importance in times of need and war, and displays more than 600 examples of feedsack prints. Book tells how to reproduce antique quilts such as Ozark Cobblestones, Flower Pot, as well as some newlymade quilts using old feedsacks and reproduction prints.

Discover the history behind more than 250 dolls, with photos, fabric panels, and ephemera that bring America’s past to life. Since the day a simple rag doll was carried off the Mayflower, dolls have captured our hearts, and thrifty Americans have always made dolls for their children. As the centuries progressed, early homemade dolls with painted faces gave way to commercial cut-and-sew versions. Then advertisers jumped in with dolls printed on flour sacks and fabric panels—which became precious possessions of little girls during the dark days of the Great Depression and World War II. In this book, you’ll find history and photographs of more than 250 dolls, fabric panels, and doll ephemera, many rarely seen items, careful collected and documented by historian Gloria Nixon.

Printed cotton sacks are currently fashionable aspects for material culture research, particularly in the costume and quilt history communities. In the second quarter of the twentieth century, these mass-produced sacks were relied upon by rural America as a valuable source of free fabric for clothing, quilts, and home d cor. This book is the catalog for the Museum of Texas Tech University's "Cotton and Thrift" exhibition, which showcases the Pat L. Nickols Cotton Sack Research Collection. The Nickols Collection includes white sacks, printed partial and whole cotton sacks, swatches of printed sacks, instructional booklets, garments, quilts, quilt tops and decorated white sacks. Combined with earlier and subsequent individual donations, the almost 6000 feed sack pieces held by the Museum of TTU make this the largest collection of feed sack materials to be assembled by an American university, and likely the largest such collection in public hands.

This book presents early educational content including the alphabet, numbers one through ten, colors, thirty-one action words, and other vocabulary. Each page is set up in a format that encourages the reader to ask additional questions and engage in dialogue with their students or children. In addition, each page features a feedsack or a feedsack reproduction made in the traditional grandmother's garden quilting pattern. The images on each page were selected so that visual learners can search and point to the correct item. This will help young children learn many sight words and show advances in receptive language for the beginner reader. This book combines feed sacks or feed sack reproductions to present a variety of elementary learning concepts. Feed sack collectors and quilters will find it especially appealing because they can describe their interests to their loved ones. This book will also be appreciated by anyone who wants to instruct their children or students in an interactive and fun way

Feedsacks, flour sacks, and sugar sacks have been popular for creating quilts, garments and sewn household items from the 1800s through the 1960s. Made of strong, durable 200 thread count cotton, the sacks came in a variety of colors and patterns. Today, fabric manufacturers are offering reproduction fabrics true to vintage sack material designs. &break;&break;Sugar Sack Quilts contains a comprehensive overview of feed sacks produced between 1930 and 1960. Hailey also offers 12 modern designs for coordinating projects, from bed quilts to wall hangings. This book also contains a fascinating combination of historic information and quilting projects for a great value.

From poodle skirts of the 1950s to baby doll dresses of the 1990s, the fabrics of our everyday lives are featured in this handy reference guide to the materials of the last half century. A companion to Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide 1800-1960, this source is ideal for those studying fashion and clothing trends from the late twentieth century, as well as collectors of recent quilts. Today's quilts may have elements of more than one decade because many quilters collect a great deal of fabric, and may draw from one group of fabric over a long period of time. The recent proliferation of reproduction fabrics has caused concern for the ability to differentiate the old from the new in reproduction quilts and repairs. An informative section on these fabrics from the 1980-2000 era provides a blueprint for building confident conclusions as to the fabric's origins. For ease in identification, prints are shown actual size and specific fabric lines and styles are grouped and sorted by date, then color. Dating divisions coincide with turning points in history which influenced attitudes and styles, and are highlighted by a brief history of each era.