Flour Sack Towels | Flour Sack Dish Towels

Do you remember a time, long, long ago, during the depression and probably much further back than that, when people didn't have much money to spend for nothing?

That's back in a time when these beautiful little flour sack towels first originated, at least it does in my great grandmother's tale's.

She used to tell me stories about when she was growing up and one of them actually had to do with flour sacks.

See, back then, they didn't make a lot of money so you had to stretch every penny that your family came across (that part didn't sound so different than it does today).

But one of the things that they used to do is buy these huge bags of flour to make a ton of different things with. So lets get into a little bit of history on these:

Flour Sack Towels

You see, back then, they bought a lot of things in bulk as you could get a lot of it at a fairly cheap price for the times.

This included buying these huge bags of flour that would weigh in at 25 to 30 pounds. Some would come with prints on them and others would just be plain white (or off-white).

Because her daddy had 3 little girls (her and her sisters), they would look to buy these huge bags of flour in the fancier printed bags, because they knew that they would need to reuse them for something.

One thing they did a lot differently back then is that they recycled and reused just about everything that they could, they couldn't afford any of the extra amenities like most can these days. So they had to be very resourceful.

They'd take these flour sacks and make them into just about everything that they could.

They'd make pretty little dresses and shirts out of them or cut them down into reusable napkin sizes.

They'd also sew them together and make beautiful tablecloth's, and of course into what they got their name for, flour sack towels.

When they did that, they'd just roll up individual loaves or bunches of biscuits in these flour sack towels. That would keep all the bugs and critters off them long enough until it was time for them to eat them.

I don't think I could've lived back then as for one I'm not a very prolific baker and two, I'm a little spoiled.

You see, my memories of these great little towels are not nearly as fond as hers. My memories stem more from pain rather than pleasurable little memoirs of a simpler time.

My memories of flour sack towels growing up stem from an older brother, which it was his passion to take mom's favorite light kitchen towels and twirl them up until it made a nice little whip-weapon to snap at my backside. OUCH!