My name is Olivia and I love helping my mother make dresses. I never realized just how much time it took to make clothes. My mommy always made sure my sisters and brothers had clothes to wear but usually they came as “hand-me-downs” from other family members or friends. I remember looking at the other girls at school and how pretty their dresses were. I didn’t mind my “hand-me-downs” but I longed for a nice dress from the Country Store. That all changed one day when my mommy came back from visiting her sister in Central City. Tucked away in a box was the most beautiful piece of feed sack I had ever seen. It was green with little red flowers. At first I thought it was going to become draps or a table cloth. I never thought it would become my first Feed sack dress. I remember my mommy saying, “repair, reuse, make do, and don’t throw anything away”. We never did have the money to buy new clothes and the only money there was was from mending socks and sewing for others. My daddy was a farmer and with 6 kids, not much was left over after food and paying bills. I think I was about 4 years old when I first saw a sacks of flour at the store. Then came the chicken feed bags with all the pretty patterns. Granny always said, “waste not, want not”. I didn’t understand that until I found patterns of some of my dresses on the quilts and in the rugs. while it was to be a surprise for my birthday, I saw my mommy at the sewing machine one day working on the green fabric.
