"Henhouse Linen" is the name of the memory that my grandmother wrote in a book full of beautiful stories that she has shared with all of us, memories of how things were in her childhood growing up, and in her young married years as well. These are grandma's words and memories.
Come with me as I take a peek into times past when money was tight and the depression was raging...
Back in the days when no amount of money was considered "chicken feed" folks made do with what they had.
Feed sacks were plentiful on most farms, and the fabric they were made of clothed countless families during the depression.
Mother raised rabbits when I was young and the feed for the rabbits came in colored printed sacks. After the contents were used the sacks would be put into a salt solution to set the colors, then washed and ironed to be kept for sewing projects.
Mother didn’t sew much. In school I had a teacher, Miss Mary Ryan who taught me everything I know about sewing. Our class was made up of farm girls. Sewing opened up many new ideas for us. Miss Ry7an had books of decorating ideas and she encouraged us to make good use of the feed sacks. We were proud of the dresses that we could make form the material that was available to us
We would always tell my daddy to get at least three bags of feed in the same pattern design. If we had a special project going, often my daddy would buy more feed at one time than he had intended to, just to get the bags alike.
The dress that I made for my sewing project was made from feed sacks and all of my mother’s aprons were made from the sacks as well. My daddy would proudly show me the newest feed sacks that he had purchased feed in knowing that I would have ideas as to what to make from the material.
My mother had a special drawer in the dresser that she kept the sacks in. Anytime that I needed material for something, I always knew that I could check out what was in the drawer. When I had children of my own most of their little dresses were made from that same feed sack material, the girls were able to have pretty little dresses with very little expense that way.
I also began searching around the web a bit and I came across a book on Amazon that looked quite interesting, there are just so many things we could learn about the way women did things when times were even more tough and women still liked to appear neat and tidy.