How to Make a Flour Sack Pillow

Flour sacks supplied families with fabric as well as flour.

Flour sacks carry a link to the past, when people purchased freshly ground flour in fabric sacks. Because fabric was expensive and housewives were frugal, they usually put their flour sacks to good use after emptying them. Flour mills often printed their logos with water-soluble ink that would wash away to enable families to reuse the fabric. Some mills used patterned fabric for their sacks as a marketing ploy to appeal to women, notes Susan Strasser, author of “Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash.” Give a nod to yesteryear and make a flour sack pillow for a distinctive sewing project.

Things You'll Need

• Flour sack (vintage or new)
• Tape measure
• Fiberfill
• Matching thread
• Needle

Instructions

1. Cut the open end of the fabric to the size you want for the pillow, in a square or a rectangle.

2. Fill the sack with fiberfill. Add enough filling to make a plump and attractive pillow. Push the fiberfill down into the corners and ensure you add enough to stuff the pillow to the desired firmness.

3. Cut an 18-inch length of thread and thread the needle. Pull the ends of the thread through the eye of the needle to make them even and tie a small knot.

4. Bring the raw edges of the flour sack together and sew small overhand stitches about one-half inch in along the open end of the sack. Make the stitches about one-eighth inch apart, and sew small stitches along the entire open edge.

5. Tie a small knot in the thread near the fabric. Insert the needle down into the fabric and push it back up again about two inches away along one side of the fabric.

6. Pull the needle up to make the thread taut and clip the thread flush with the fabric; this will bury the knot inside the fiberfill.

Tips & Warnings

• If the sack has a printed logo, center it on the front of the pillow. Measure equal distances to the right and left sides, and the top and bottom, and cut the fabric. Create a square or rectangular pillow, depending on the sack's width and the size of the logo.

References

• “Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash"; Susan Strasser; 2000