Annabear

“I’ve heard of it before,” I said, puzzled, “But I thought that was something that used to happen... oh, one hundred years ago, maybe.”

My Aunt Marge (who knows I am a seamstress in my spare time) was showing me a collection of cloth that she found when she and my other aunts cleaned out my grandmother’s house following her death several years ago. She pointed out several pieces of cotton print which she said had started their existence as chicken feed bags. The feed manufacturers would sell the feed in bags that sported pretty prints so that the thrifty farmers’ wives could make dresses out of them.

“No,” said Aunt Marge, “The practice was continued up ’till about the 1950s or so.”

Aunt Marge was going to donate the fabric to a local quilting club if she found no takers among the various relatives.I chose 3 pieces of fabric (all of the feed bag type) ’cause I thought it would be cool to have a vest or two made with feed bag fabric that my grandmother had saved.

The fabric had languished in my sewing room for about a year when I decided that, instead of a vest, I would make a bear. Pictured is Annabear. The blue flowered fabric that she is made of started life as a feedbag.
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