The Rickrack Rag

Another cold weekend ahead here in the northeast, so I’m glad to be continuing our visit to tropical climes. This week we’re headed south of the border, down Mexico way. Here’s a selection of feedsacks with a Mexican theme:

This is by no means the only selection of Mexican themed sacks; I’ve seen quite a number with larger-scale vignettes, in various colorways – perhaps I’ll be able to feature them later.
There are also sacks that feature cactus from the desert southwest, and finally, you’ll want to wear one of these sun hats woven from palm leaves to keep from getting too hot.

I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to use the tropical theme to escape the reality of our winter chill, but we’ll see what we can find for next week on Feedsack Friday.

After posting last weeks array of feedsacks depicting pineapples, I couldn’t shake the relief I felt from the long winter nights and chilly days – so I decided to continue this week on a tropical theme to relieve the midwinter blahs. This week we have sacks featuring palm trees, island scenes and even dancers in grass skirts!

The first and third sacks above are almost identical, just changing red and green in the background.


Many of these other sacks have color variations as well, I’ve seen several different combinations on the first of the two below:

We found other sacks featuring palms and some other tropical features this week, but instead of presenting them now, we decided to extend our feature next week with a visit south of the border, featuring those and other aspects of Mexican and southwestern themes.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of Feedsack Friday!

Welcome to another edition of feedsack Friday. Today, in order of counteract some of the chill that’s present in the northeast this time of year, we’ll feature something tropical, that venerable symbol of welcome: the pineapple. The pineapple is hardly a welcoming fruit in appearance, even forbidding with its spiky outer covering, but from the time of Columbus’ second voyage has become renowned as a special treat, and used as a symbol to welcome guests.

Feedsacks, as a part of everyday life, did not neglect representation of the pineapple, both realistically, and somewhat abstractly as we see in these examples.

Well, ok, maybe more than a little abstract in the case of those last two, but I think you’ll have to agree that those are pineapple-inspired designs, however wild and garish. Wish I could get to Hawaii this week to compare with the ones there….

We’re now well into winter, and much of the country is feeling the chill. This morning we had another dusting of snow here; things have been covered in white for the past week, and we’re not due for a thaw until next week. So it’s a perfect time to play in the snow.

Feedsack designs have celebrated snowy weather in a number of ways. This pup obviously enjoys his downhill slide, while the kids have fun sledding and building snowmen.

A snowy winter landscape is perfect for skating and sleighrides.

Finally, the snowflakes themselves can be considered as beautiful works of art.
A word to you southerners: don’t envy us our snow too much, until you’ve had to shovel it, or pull your vehicle from a snowdrift. It can be fun, but it can also be a lot of work.

I’m sure we’ll see more snow this winter, but I’ll soon be ready for it to end.

Lots of kids got lots of toys from Santa this Christmas. And lots of us are still kids in many ways, and we all love our toys. Here are some feedsacks covered with a selection of little toys:

Three color variations on the same toys, and then some larger toys, too:

OK, everybody play nice – there are plenty of toys to share – and we’ll see you all back here soon for another edition of Feedsack Friday.

Happy New Year!! And don’t miss the feedsacks we’re currently offering on eBay!

‘Tis the week before Christmas, and all through the room, I’m looking for feedsacks to brighten the gloom…

Seems we’re about to have our first big snowstorm of the winter, and with temperatures due to stay below freezing, it may be a white Christmas for us this year. There aren’t too many feedsacks that have a Christmas theme, but we did find a few. First are these two featuring candy canes, one in the traditional red and green, the other in an unusual colorway:

That’s all we were able to find in our feedsack stash that showed a specifically Christmas theme in an overall print – but we do have one other Christmas sack from the Chase Bag Co., printed on a larger scale with scattered Santas, candy canes, presents and trees, along with the company logo. I can imagine a stack of these filled with feed at the local mill, lending an air of festivity to an otherwise workaday scene:

I’m not sure we’ll do Feedsack Friday next week on Christmas day, but hopefully we’ll still have a few other holiday-oriented postings. Happy holidays, everyone!

Quilters and others often look for fabrics in solid colors to offset or contrast with print fabrics, and for some reason solid colored feedsacks seem to be among the scarcest. We don’t find them in the same bright colors of the printed sacks; for instance, I have yet to see one in that bright lime green, nor in vivid red. Mostly what we see are subtle shades, pastels and the like. In fact, the very subltlety of the colors makes it difficult for us to post a true representation of the color on our site. We’ve been sold out of solids for a while, but here are some we’ve come across that we’re adding to our stock.

This time we found no yellows, nor pinks – but we have seen them before, along with others…

Of course, there are many, many more. One thing we’ve also found is that some folks home-dyed plain white sacks to use for their projects, but I believe that all of these were factory colors. I do have one in apricot, and one in green, with lettering from the label still on them.

After the big feast of yesterday, there were a lot of dishes to clean up. Many of us have used dishtowels made of feedsack over the years, but this week we’ll feature feedsacks with dishes, cups, saucers, plates, etc. printed right on them.

But before we get to that, by way of being thankful ourselves for everything that we have, I want to announce our Feed America feedsack give back. For every feedsack that we sell here at Sharon’s between now and Christmas day, we will donate $1.00 to Feeding America, the network of food banks that helps so much to feed the hungry people of our country. The need is greater this year than ever, and I hope we’ll be able to contribute a lot.

Many of the dishes printed on feedsacks appear to be more decorative than utilitarian, but then who wants to look at dull dishes, pots & pans?

While some are shown set on a table, others are apparently on display.

And some are clearly more appropriate for just beverages, rather than a whole meal.

That’s our selection for this week, now that all the dishes are washed, dried and put away we’ll just be thinking about getting ready for the next feast. And we hope you’ll think, when you think of feedsacks, about feeding those who are less fortunate. Make a donation that matters to your local food bank, soup kitchen or shelter.

Sharon grew up Catholic, so Friday meant fish. One day, you could be cast into Hell for eating meat, then suddenly it’s ok. This Friday we’re featuring fish on feedsacks – you’ll see that most of them are rather tropical looking. We’ve had the one in the center, with the surfers and spear-fishermen in several colorways.

I especially like that one with the seahorses; had it once ten years ago and haven’t seen it since.

Finally, though we have a number of sacks featuring various types of fish, we’ve seen only this one that concentrates on the subject of traditional fishing, in a somewhat abstract and design-y way. Which makes this another of our favorites – you might say we fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Fisherman’s luck on Friday the 13th? Maybe… but join us next week when hopefully we’ll be back on dry land for another Feedsack Friday.

We’ve always thought that some feedsacks were pretty enough to frame as art, but today we’re featuring feedsacks that actually have framed vignettes, pictures or figures as part of their design. Here are three variations on a fruit theme; I have to say that the yellow bananas are considerably more appetizing than the pink or blue!

These framed tropical scenes might also be the view from the windows of a tiki hut; we also have floral still life pictures on pink walls, and oval cameo portraits.

That’s all we have today, see you next Feedsack Friday!