Feed Sacks: A Colourful History of a Frugal Fabric

The history of feed sacks may sound dry, but McCray (Art Quilts of the Midwest) lavishly pairs spare but eloquent text with hundreds of illustrations and photos in this fascinating stroll through American domestic history. Beginning in the mid-1800s, frugal and inventive housewives began transforming feed sacks, originally intended as a cheap means of transporting goods, into items they needed for their families, including clothing and blankets. Companies eager for consumer recognition responded by producing sacks suitable for such repurposing, redesigning their product to better meet the needs of their customers. McCray charts the evolution of feed sacks from their invention to their eventual obsolescence in the 1960s, documenting the myriad of purposes to which ingenious women put the humble cloth sacks over the decades. This is a lengthy visual history, with sufficient information to provide context while focusing on pictorial depictions of the subject matter. The text by itself is rather short; considered only from that angle, this is an overview of the history of the feed sack, not an in-depth study. Where the work shines is in its visual aspect. The illustrations and photos document the history of the feed sack and provide a rich experience that text alone could not match. (Nov.)