How I Spent My Afternoon: Cleaning Old Feed Sacks (A "How To" Guide!) | You Call It Obsession & Obscure; I Call It Research & Important | Scoop.it
While the graphics can be real beauties, they lie beneath layers & clumps of stuff that is not so beautiful and smells — like dirt and, yes, manure.

In order to be of any real value, the vintage and antique feed sacks must be cleaned.

But it is neither safe nor advisable to throw them into the wash machine. (Since the weave of burlap sacks is so wide, I rarely ever trust my washing machine with them. Even the gentle or hand-wash settings always seems to create pulls or holes, often starting at the threads at the seams. I just don’t like to risk it.)

Instead, you must hand wash them — and, due to their size, one at a time at that.

While the old feed sacks I cleaned today are made of burlap, you can clean other feed, seed, flour, sugar sacks etc. in the same way.

How To Clean Old Feed, Flour, Seed Sacks Found In Barns