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Stitches in time
Karen La Pierre
B1 purple quilt
This purple quilt was made with feed sacks and was a neighborhood quilt made in 1937 by the Stitch and Chatter Club at the home of Grace Jennings. During the 1800s, cotton feed sacks replaced barrels as food containers, which were initially unbleached white cotton. Around 1925, manufacturers began using color. In the late 1930s, manufacuturers began competing to produce attractive prints. Artists were hired to design them because women chose products by the color. By the 1950s, companies switched over to paper bags. A standard feed sack was about 37 by 43 inches.
eedlework has long been a past time of women of the prairie. It provided a creative outlet and beauty during the harsh life in the Great Plains and still today, is the hobby of choice for many.The quilts, many sewn with fabric from worn out clothing or flour sacks, provided warmth during bitterly cold winters.The Santa Fe Trail Center in Larned, 1349 K-156 Hwy, is having a quilt show of antique and modern quilts, which provide an unwritten record of life of historic and modern times. The exhibit runs until July 8, and the cost of admittance is $4.“All of the quilts in the exhibit were made by local people,” said Anna Bassford, director of the Santa Fe Trail Center.