Gloria's Flour Bags

Gloria's Dad bought flour from this mill to make bread.  Her husband joined the process, and she has saved bags from both of them.  She sent them to me to create a memory.  It's 56 x 68

I cut the bags in half to separate front and back, then pieced them separately.  I used the churn dash/monkey wrench block pattern, and 1800's reproduction fabrics since that is when the mill was established, and chose colors that matched the printing on the bags.

bag back

bag front - the type of flour is stamped in the boxed area

I ditched around the bags, then added cross hatching on the diagonal

back and forth in the block corners, (above) 

and loops around the colored part of the block(below)

I quilted slices of bread in the larger areas of the background, and stitched again 1/4" away to separate it from the back ground filler (small meander). 

 It didn't show well, so I went back over it in brown thread.

I used a new circle template to quilt circles in the monkey wrench

feathers in the red border, and a script letter L repeated 3 times, then again in the opposite direction in the brown border. 

The backing is called Chocolate and cherries, and matches the red and brown perfectly.  It's really a much darker brown

The bag was folded in half then sewn in a large chain stitch.  I cut them apart to separate the colors.

She came up with the perfect idea for the name and label info: