grain sack | Sheepy Hollow Farm

I made several ‘new’ pillows over the holiday week. A simple red stripe ticking pillow cover/insert and recycled grain sacks with tie closures [for ease of laundering].

While I was feeling patriotic, I also made a few red/white/blue banners.

I cut the pennants from an inexpensive cotton red striped dish towel! I folded over a seam [and machine stitched] to run my cotton cord through. I used bits of blue calico cotton fabric for the stars. I simply made a star paper pattern that I liked and traced it onto the blue fabric. [You could also block print/stamp a star motif.]

Since I didn’t want to spend hours hand-stitching all the stars to the pennant, I used a few dabs of fabric glue to make quick work out of my patriotic banner(s). There’s always room for one more…

woohoo…and there you have it!

A week or so ago, I shared my ‘faux’ grain sack foot stool make-over. Since my household budget won’t allow the extravagance of the real deal (antique grain sacks range $50 and upward), that is, one with graphics, stripes, embroidered initials, made with linen or hemp…I decided to fake my grain sack’s appearance (and used a heavy cotton duck which I painted with stripes/graphics).

Well, this weekend I visited my local flea market and found my $3 antique grain sacks – yes, that’s $3 total (or $1.50 each)!?

After a pre-soak and twice through the wash cycle, here’s what they look like. They ain’t pretty; they are ‘worn’ and have a couple of repairs and a few tatters/holes over the course of its hard-working years.

A true piece of Americana dating from the late 19th Century ~ early 1900’s. The Royal River Seamless grain bag with its logo in faded blue was made in the area of Yarmouth, Me on the Royal River.

It is a cotton bag of a coarse weave. Logo in the center on front with a band of stripes on either side both front and back.