Month: February 2012

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I’ll be talking about fabric this week as I’m collecting it for my upcoming book, 1, 2, 3 Quilt.

Today I’m going to talk about vintage and feedsack fabrics. If you’re unfamiliar with feedsack fabrics, the term refers to the use of grain and livestock feed sacks used out of necessity to make clothing, from the early 1900s until around the 1950s . At first, the manufacturers of feed sacks printed plain cloth with just their company name, but as women began making these sacks into clothing, the grain companies started adding prints to the fabric. You can read a brief history of the fabrics in this post by Linzee McCray on Etsy’s blog.

What is now commonly called “feedsack fabric” often refers to the style of these prints, rather than the original fabric. But sometimes you might find an intact sack or a clue that your fabric was once used as a sack. The fabrics pictured above were purchased from here and there and I can’t be sure of their origins, but I love the style. In addition to a looser weave, feedsack fabrics used floral and geometric designs. Some of the designs can actually appear quite modern and I love the sweet florals as well. You’ll also see lots of new prints reminiscent of these feedsack designs, most notably in Denyse Schmidt’s fabric designs. And you can also find fabric manufacturers who are directly reproducing the vintage prints.

What I love about this fabric style is the reminder that people made beautiful things out of necessity, rather than as hobby. I find that incorporating vintage fabrics into a new design pulls things around full circle for me and adds meaning to a project.

Here’s the Circles Floor Pillow project from my book 1, 2, 3 Sew where I used a selection of vintage, reproduction feedsack and Liberty prints. Yes, this pillow has reverse appliqué with unfinished edges because I love the look. I do recommend in the book, however, that if you are making this project for everyday use, you should machine stitch around the perimeter of the circles for added durability.

Photo by Laura Malek.

 

 

Since I’ve started working on 1, 2, 3 Quilt, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (obsessing) about fabric. While I love many of the designer fabrics on the market, I worry about using them in a book that won’t come out for another year, when the fabrics will be gone from stores and left as a distant trend memory from 2012. I’d really like to see more fabric companies put out basic lines with lasting designs. When I’m making a quilt, I don’t want to look back on it in 10 years and remember the fabric collection or designer, but rather the design and love that went into the quilt’s making. This is certainly not to knock designer fabric, especially since I have my own collection coming out in a few months! But I wonder if this is a sustainable way to market fabric. It seems to me that the market is saturated and we’re constantly inundated with new collections. I just wonder if there is a better way.

Anyway, this week I thought I’d share some of the fabrics I’m using in the book. I love hand printed fabrics. Love the texture, the imperfect quality and the hand of the maker that went into the process. Above are some fabrics from Summersville, Bespoke Uprising, one I printed myself and a few from Home Sweet (one of my new sponsors). I’m still collecting fabrics for the book and hand printed fabrics are on the top of my list, though obviously more expensive. So I cherish every scrap! My Quilt Blocks collection was definitely influenced by hand printed fabrics. Many of the designs are a single color printed on a white background and all of them have a degree of imperfection. I designed the entire collection with perfectly straight lines and symmetry, then went back and changed it all to make it imperfect, giving it a more handmade feel.

Here are some of my other Etsy favorite shops for handmade fabric, both block and screen printed:

Aunty Cookie

Blueberry Ash

Melissa Bombardiere

Mookah

Umbrella Prints

1014 Organic Textiles

Workroom Social

Sarah Waterhouse

And I love to search Etsy for hand-printed tea towels. You can read my post here about printing your own fabrics with some basic methods that anyone can do at home.

Oh, and I also wanted to include this photo from 1, 2, 3 Sew of the Set The Table Runner. This is perhaps my favorite photo from the book. Photo by Laura Malek. Fabric by Jenny of Home Sweet. She is offering a 15% discount to readers of The Long Thread. Simply enter the code “longthread” at checkout.