THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502170101
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
SOME FOLKS BUY figurines and photographs. Elle Ryan of Virginia Beach collects cotton feedsacks.
Some people set up lit display cabinets in their living rooms to show off their collections. Ryan, however, curated a museum exhibit with her nationally significant feedsack collection at its core.
Many of the 75-plus objects on view at the Decatur House in Washington, D.C., belong to Ryan, an exhibiting fiber artist who sewed with feedsacks as a girl.
On view in ``The Art of Making Do'' are dresses, bonnets, pieced quilts, tea towels and aprons - all made from cotton sacks used to package commodities like flour, sugar and animal feed. Quilts made by Ryan from feedsack samples also are on display.
Ryan also lent the show her swatch books, containing thousands of feedsack scraps that reveal the wide range of designs and colors available from the mid-19th century into the 1950s.
She doesn't collect as investment. ``It's for my own enjoyment, and to learn the history of it. I just love all the fabric,'' she said.
Early on, struggling housewives thought to use rather than toss the sacks, filling a need for fabric that was especially dire in rural areas, she said. Women would soak the sacks to remove logos, then perhaps dye the fabric to suit them.
The price was right - mere chicken feed.
Seeing this trend, companies gained a competitive edge by bagging their products in attractive and increasingly comfortable materials. Soon, families could buy products in plaid, polka dot and floral containers.
Growing up in rural Michigan in the 1940s, Ryan and the other girls sewed their own clothes from feedsacks ``because that is what was available,'' she said.
From the sacks, Ryan made dresses, pajamas, shorts, halters and ``broomstick'' skirts. She maintained a sizable sack collection in those days, but used them all making clothes.
Her current collection mostly was amassed since she began working on a quilt for her granddaughter in 1990. She has found examples in junk shops, at yard sales and through an international feedsack collector's club based in Pittsburgh.
She plans to continue using the scraps to make quilts. ``No matter what prints are in feedsacks, they somehow go together. It's a comforting feeling to look at them.
``To me, it represents a very warm home feeling.''
The exhibit continues through Feb. 26 at Decatur House, on Lafayette Square at 748 Jackson Place, N.W. Open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, noon to 4 p.m. weekends. Admission is $3, $1.50 for seniors and students; free for ages 6 and younger. ILLUSTRATION: Decatur House
Elle Ryan's cotton feedsack collection is on view at the Decatur
House in Washington, D.C.
by CNB