Mystery Material

 

Good morning!

I pride myself on remembering a lot of things.  In my family, I tend to be "the memory" for my mom, husband, etc.  

This extends as well to my fabric and quilt collection.  Often while walking the dog, I think to myself, "there is the house that I got the Marimekko fabric, or the house that I got this quilt or that."

But the one thing I don't remember is where I got some of this vintage fabric.  It wasn't unusual for me to be handed boxes of fabric from friends and acquaintances but usually I can remember that fabric as well.

One of the mystery things in my stash are these blocks of what appears to be vintage sheets:

I remember thinking years ago that this was a strange thing to have been given.  Then a few years ago, using retro 1970s sheets for quilts became a fad, here's an example of an article that was published pre-pandemic.

But I didn't have just scraps, I had yardage as well.  

For years I've been thinking that some of the vintage fabric was just yardage...even the ones that felt like feed sack material.  I knew that feed sack material was also sold by the yard and I didn't think much about it.  

Since I had the vintage fabric suitcase open, I decided to work on a quilt with fabric that reminded me of my great-grandmother's kitchen.  I cut the quilt blocks and started piecing (more on that later).  It wasn't until the very end of the piecing that I realized there were stitch holes near the selvage.  

Wait, what?  Suddenly it hit me why I had 5 pieces of fabric that measured 35 x 42 or so (I'm conservative when I measure fabric).

They were feed sacks!  And after I finished the top, I began to measure and refold more of the fabric in the suitcase.  All of these were feed sacks:

And there were more.  I had to look really REALLY closely to see if there were stitch holes near the selvages.  Mostly I had to use a magnifying glass.

All told, there were 21 feed sacks.  And here's the thing that's mysterious to me, I've never been one to buy feed sacks or even fabric that resembled feed sacks.  I have friends who have whole collections of the fabric sacks (yes, I'm talking about you, Sue P.).  I just don't know that I ever bought any.   

I'm not sure who gave me this fabric.  Was it a friend or a friend of a friend?  Was some of this fabric included in fabric that my aunt found in my Nana's house?  I have no idea.  But I'm enjoying this stash and if you gave these fabrics to me, thank you.

Do you have mysterious material in your stash?

Have a safe and happy day!