Feedsack Fabrics and Friends

I'm starting off the New Year with a lot of starts but no finishes.  So far, I'm working on five projects, one time sensitive, three sew alongs and one UFO.  It doesn't help that during all of this creating, I received my copy of Feed Sacks by Linzee Kull McCray which is, as it states on the cover, "The Colorful History of a Frugal Fabric."  It is an absolutely beautiful book, over 500 pages of feed sack history and photos of the many feed sack prints which I just love.  I happen upon this book from reading one of the many blogs I discovered ever since I started blogging and thought I could order it from Amazon.  Much to my surprise, it's not available from them so I had to do a little bit of searching to find it is only available from Uppercase Magazine (here is the link: Uppercase Magazine) which turned out to be a pretty awesome website and I ended up purchasing another book and magazine subscription.

When I started quilting almost twenty years ago, I fell immediately in love with feed sack fabrics which right around that time, feed sack reproduction fabrics were becoming available but in very few prints.  Fortunately for me, I had friends who had original feed sack fabrics in their stash and shared some with me.  Without their generosity, I would have never been able to make these three quilts which I dearly love and to me are my "antique" quilts.

These feed sack quilts and my other projects which are in the works have always been handwork projects done during traveling on road trips.  I realize now that they are all appliquéd or hand pieced which I don't do very often.

I already have the tendency to save all of my scraps especially my feed sack scraps which to me they are like gold.  My friends thought I was crazy to do this but I saved all of the quarter circles that were cut from making the clamshells to make these 2" circles, some of which I happily sent some to Susan Snooks in Australia since I thought she would appreciate them.

And getting back to feed sack fabrics and friends theme of this post, when my husband and I travelled to Oregon several years ago, I went to a quilt shop and the owner kindly gave me some original feed sack fabrics from her stash.  I must have a face that says feed me feed sack fabrics.  Actually I had shown her my photo of the feed sack circles and she knew then I was a feed sack fanatic.  I'm now inspired to start working on one of my Feed Sack WIPs but right now I have to wait for the next road trip which will be traveling to Yellowstone this summer.  I don't know if I can wait that long though.

Now back to an update for this week's activities; they are:

• sewed a backing for an UFO quilt (Just My Type)
• cut fabric pieces for the Smitten Paper Piece sew-along (Five Large Hexagons)
• die-cut or triangle paper  (320) 1-1/2" HST for Country Threads Homey Triangle Sew Along (doing two quilts)
• Baby Shower Favors

My 2017 Minus 100 Yard Challenge Balance so far:  Minus 6 yards

I haven't purchased any new fabric and have been tempted with the new Cotton + Steel lines.  I even placed an order with Missouri Star Quilt yesterday and did not order any fabric, just some notions--totally unheard of, right?  Going to do some housework now so I can continue working on my projects tonight.  Hopefully I will have a finish for next week and adding some more yardage to the challenge log.

Sew strong!

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