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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Feed Bags. Yesterday and Today!




What are we doing now with feed bags! A couple of weeks ago, I attended my first CT Weavers Guild meeting. There was a workshop going on, making new plastic feed bags into shopping bags. This is not something new, my sister has horses and makes them with lovely horses on them.  But something clicked in while seeing the weavers having fun with feedbags. I was about to throw away my Rabbit Chow bag... and then.... Wait! I can make a shopping bag!

When I was a little girl in Connecticut, we raised rabbits. My mom, being a New England farmer, used the emptied sacks to make clothing, curtains, aprons and quilts. I still have some of her quilts. She liked crazy quilts with the kids clothing scraps and feed bag fabric scraps.


Crazy Quilt by Phyllis Albrecht Britton...  1960s

















Feed sacks were not always mustard colored burlap. One thinks of women and girls parading around in course, ugly burlap sacks. Not so.

Linen and cotton bags were used way back for storing feed and grains. With the invention of the sewing machine and lock stitch strong enough to hold feed and grain, plain, heavy canvas was a perfect material. Synthetics, became popular in the 1910s, and cotton fell out of favor for garments and was available cheaply for holding grain and feed. It was tight enough to hold the feed, durable and it breathed.

feed sack dresses 1947




















In the 1920s, a cloth bag manufacturer thought more grain sacks would sell if they had a nice print on them and a detachable label so that the farmers wife can reuse the material. Throughout our great depression, the bags were desired for home use as shortages of every material made the colorful bags useful.  Sometime in the 1950s colorful fabric bags became more expensive to make and they fell out of fashion.


You can still buy these lovely old prints on Ebay and at tag sales. My moms quilt scraps still exist in the crazy quilts she made, long after our dresses and curtains have been thrown out.


Here we are 50 years later, and the next generation is making stuff out of those new plastic feed sacks again! The material is very sturdy, waterproof and comes in a variety of colors and patterns.  What fun!

Take a look in those food bins you have for your dogs, cats and birds... Right here in my kitchen I see we have a new sack of Cat chow for Tessa and there is a nice dog in the crock bin for Rusty that is about ready to be sewn into another sack.


And if you have a farm nearby, keep an eye out for some unusual sacks to pick up.



It is a great way to recycle, show people you like cats, or rabbits or potbellied pigs, use instead of plastic shopping bags the stores pass out by the billions and they make great gifts... kids love them.

Check out the links below. Google "feed sack totes and bags" for design ideas, buy them at craft fairs and farmers markets. I saw a cleaver person make a tarp by sewing a few bags together... how about a crazy quilt of bags for your lawn mower to replace that blue one you bought at Job Lot?

Life can be fun... Make it so.

http://www.buchanancountyhistory.com/feedsack.php
http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/bittersweet/su77f.htm

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Red Birds... Think Spring Gardens!


Spring!





Torrington, CT
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It is 3 degrees here in Torrington. I am bundled onto my couch while I type on my lap top. I have on a wool hat, thermals, sweat pants and sweat shirt, a quilt, a crocheted comforter and my pellet stove is blazing 8 feet away. And my feet are still cold. It is an old house I live in. Minneapolis is -3 and Grand Marais MN is -11. (Hi Marco). That's not too bad, I have felt worse.

I am thinking of spring though. It was sunny and warm in the house today as I worked on some pottery. I am still making face jugs. I am testing out some new clay formulas, hopefully a new clay batch will be more "yellow" for my yellow ware. My old clay mine I had been getting clay from in Missouri has been mining out a little too light and more buff color for the past couple of years. I also mixed up some colored slips for the little kiddos at Goshen school. We will be making snowman jars tomorrow with blue and green.... hats and scarves using the colored slips.

And I was thinking of spring. I was working on casting and trimming my Red Birds for gardens.

Many of you have bought my Red Birds for your gardens, house plants and flower vases. They sell well at fairs where people buy them individually. The 2- 1/2" birds come in 3 positions. I am putting together a new gift box of the 3. They will be available on my web site and at my shows starting up in April. See my web site, www.eastknollpottery.com for the birds and places I will be demonstrating.













And, Happy Winter!  Spring will be here soon enough, embrace the cold, get as much sunlight as possible and be warm.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Connecticut Weavers Guild

Being semi-unemployed this winter, which means I have no part time or temporary jobs this year, I am being a potter... making pottery, casting little critters and weaving for this coming years fairs, so I actually had time to look into my own states' weaving guild. I joined the Minneapolis weavers guild last year because I am out there so much. I decided to look up my own states guild last week.  I was pleased to see they had a meeting, just last Saturday in Glastonbury and I was welcomed to come over and display my looms, my weaving book and some mini pottery.

What a nice group of weavers!  I felt very welcome. I met some folks I had met at fiber festivals in the past in New England, and met some new weavers too.  The guest speakers talked about their large looms and used weaving terminology that I was glad to learn and adapt to my own weaving experience. I was given a small floor loom last year by a friend, and my sister has a barn size loom and weaves, but weaving is fairly new to me. Large looms and patterns that is.

I weave on a small tape loom. I weave small bands of cloth for ties and decoration. I am self taught, so I had to learn terminology and get advice from established weavers along the way and then come to my own definitions and style.  

Reggie Delarm, tape loom weaving

I was  well received by the members.  I sold some of my looms and books and quite a few mini pots, always a favorite.  I learned a lot. And I had fun.

Our first speaker talked about saving the ends of the warp, conservation of material. I can understand that. With a tape loom there is small waste of warp because the warp is short and the loom is just a narrow rigid heddle. You loose about 6 inches to a foot when you get up near the tie knot.  But with a larger loom there is a waste of thread between the heddles and the back beams and with a wider weave, that can amount to a lot of wasted warp.

We had a lovely, unexpected by me, lunch, show and tell, which was a fun way to see other peoples work, ideas and finds. Then another speaker, a master weaver, talked about the fact we will never fully learn everything about our trade... in her case weaving and in mine, pottery and the tape loom.
Reggie Delarm, treadle potters wheel

Geofrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales in the 1300s, and was quoted:
"The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne."

My sweetie, Roger the bowl turner, quotes this often. We who do historic trades and for that matter any craft or art, will always be learning more. No matter how good we get over the years, there will be always new things to learn and the longer we live, the more we practice, the more diligent we are, the more we will learn and accomplish, but live is so short and we will never have enough time to learn it all.

Which is a good thing. We take down our guard, we humbly admit that there is more to learn about our trade, we joyfully look forward to learning more from others and trial and error, experimenting with new equipment, methods and materials and trying new things.

I came home from the meeting wanting to get out that floor loom, try out the tapestry loom, get down my inkle from the attic and mostly to make some new projects with my simple tape looms.

Here are some of my fellow Tradesmen and Women.... working their trades for years so "longe to lerne".
Roger Abrahamson, Bowl Turner
Cindie Etienne, Felter
Bob Etienne, Flax 
John Holzwart, Brooms