21st Century Feed Sack Craft

When Sarah and I spent time out at my parents for the great Panhandle "While you were out," we decided to wander to the pasture junk piles (excuse me, recycle piles) and look around for inspiration. I saw a dog food sack from Atwoods that kinda had folksy, artsy printing and I had a flashback of a blog whose author had made stuff from animal food bags. So I asked my parents to save me a sack or two cause I had a secret, important project that involved them. My dad probably inwardly rolled his eyes. He's very supportive of our creative (or not so creative!) efforts but probably privately thinks we need to be doing manual labor instead!

Mom and Dad came to town last week for that auction we spent all day being sandblasted at and brought me a chicken feed sack.

So I made this:

What do you think?



It was a bit cumbersome to work with, but I had fun embellishing it. It's not a project for a perfectionist. There's not much ripping out because it's so easy to cut the plastic fiber of the sack as you cut the thread and the sack is stiff and definitely has a mind of its own! You've just gotta go with the flow and ignore the crooked stitches!



I embellished my new tote with vintage rick rack and bias tape, courtesy of Memaw's sewing room (the woman has hundreds of packages of this kind of trim!). I just go dig through her stuff when I need more or a different color! Tee Hee!

The trim isn't necessary but makes it cuter and the cut ends of the sack are a bit rough. And we always need more cuteness and less 'roughness,' right? And it's a great way to recycle (or is that re-sack-le?? oh my, sometimes I just crack myself up!)

For more instructions on how to make your own, go here. Auntie Joy at "A Day in the Life" has already done a tutorial so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel! And check out Auntie Joy's header while you are there. It is a picture of paper lanterns hanging from old bedsprings being used as sort of a roof for something--fun!