New Design: Feedsack Coin Purses

 Well, I did it. I could hardly bear it, but I finally cut into my little collection of feedsack fabric!

Feedsack fabric is from the 1930s and 40s era, when flour, sugar, seeds, rice, fertilizer, and feed were packaged in brightly printed cloth bags. The prudent housewife would save these bags and make useful and beautiful things out of them, like dresses, quilts, and aprons.  The sacks came in many different prints and colors, and ladies would save them up and even trade them to get just the right prints for just the right project.

If you look carefully, you can sometimes find feedsacks in thrift and antique shops. If you know what you're looking for, you can easily identify them by the look and feel of the fabric, and by the little holes along the edges where they were previously stitched into sacks.

I have found several of these lovely sacks, and I've started my own collection. I decided that, besides looking pretty, they were doing me no good just sitting on the shelf, and I want to share them with others. They needed to be made into something useful. So, here's what I've made with them so far for my etsy shop:

I thought coin purses would be appropriate. You can now carry your own pennies in a little piece of history from a time when saving pennies was an important part of daily life.

And they're cute on the inside, too!