feed sacks and memories

Okay, so this morning I was visiting over at Lib's as I do just about every morning while I have my coffee. The thing is, she always get me to thinking which I don't do well in the mornings!! :)
Her post today was all about her stash of material for crafting and what she was seeing when she looked at it. She was seeing future crafts such as dolls, snowmen, etc. I, in my morning stupor, and just having taken a few sips of my coffee, was literally looking beyond the stack of fabric in her picture and trying to find those dolls and stuff that she was seeing! He! He! So funny when I finally woke up and realized!! Anyway, I feel so connected to Lib in so many ways. She brings things to my mind that I haven't thought about in years! Today it was feedsack material and old quilts.
A few months ago Dave and I were doing our usual junkin' at a nearby flea market. I always visit one lady's booth just because her things always catch my eye. This particular day my eyes fell on a small stack of material laying on a table. I knew immediately that it was feed sacks which I was very familar with. I had to have them, not because I had plans to use them but just to have and look at and feel.
When I was young I always considered our family to be poor, at least by everybody else's standards in our little town. One of the reasons I felt this way was because I never had store bought clothes but clothes that my mother sewed for me and I so longed for and dreamed of a dress straight out of the Montgomery Wards catalogue. Back then our feed for our hogs (Daddy called it "chop") came in pretty sacks, not like this one...



but like these:



Being the youngest of the family and having 3 older sisters, I always got the hand-me-downs, which were "made over" for me because I was always tiny! Ha! Those days are over now!! I do remember one time that I got the pretty new feed sacks all for my own outfits. I didn't realize then how talented my mother was. She even made her own patterns that she used! She made two outfits for me, one with a red skirt and a white shirt with tiny red flowers on it and another was a green skirt and a shirt with yellow and green flowers. The skirts were made with circle tails which would flair out when I twirled and oh did I love to twirl!! After I wore these outfits to school a couple of my classmates (the ones I considered to be rich) showed up at our door begging my mother to make them outfits like mine! I couldn't believe it!! They could have store bought dresses and they actually wanted ones like MINE! They had even talked their parents into buying the sacks of feed, giving the chop to my Daddy for his hogs so it wouldn't go to waste, then having the sacks for their much coveted outfits!! I never looked at my clothes in the same way again!!
When I had outgrown my clothes they were then recycled again into quilt pieces. My mother was a very frugal woman and wasted nothing! Here is one of my favorites, probably because I helped to make it when I was about 8 years old:



There is a story behind this quilt which I will save for another time. I've rattled way too much today. Lib, thanks for the memories!!!