Monday, September 29, 2014

About Vintage Grain Sacks

Vintage linen grain sacks vary in weight, texture and weave, every piece is slightly different .

Most of our grain sacks date from  before 1939, most are significantly older. Our grain sacks were woven in areas of Eastern Europe with a strong peasant culture. Families would grow their own hemp and or linen, harvest it, prepare for spinning and then weave. Hemp and linen was used to make clothes as  well as household textiles and sacks and cart covers for use on the small holdings. Stripes and or monograms would indicate to the village mill whose grain was being milled. The most common coloured stripes are red or blue. We source from a small number of villages in transylvania where toffee  coloured stripes were woven form thread dyed using  walnut kernels.  Hering bone weaves are more ommon in Romaina, sometimes thes fabrics are dark and very heavy and generally not as attractive as the fabrics thtat were made in hungary, the Ukraine and  some of the Transylvanian villages.







Grain sacks are beautiful textured, versatile fabric. Measurements are for the unopened sacks .  The sacks was made of one piece of  fabric doubled over and hand stitched at the sides  the opening hems. Some sacks have a triangular of rhombode peice of cloth inserted at the opening  with which the sacks could be more easily grasped and may have been used as a pouring spout. Each grain sack is double the stated length if opened out.


Our pinterest page shows vintage grain sacks in use for furnishngs