What is sackcloth?

Question

I would say clothes made from feed sacks like momma

said she wore . Maybe someone knows different.

Answer 1

i do not know what sackcloth is but your mom knows better to me.

Answer 2

Flour came in cloth sacks in the grocery stores.  Those cloth sacks oftentimes had little prints on them and women cut them up and used them for quilting squares and such.  But, in the Great Depression, people got so poor and lacked even basic resources and started needing to use the flour sack material to make patched-together clothes, especially clothes for the youngest children.  And, in WWII, flour sack material used for aprons, dresses, hot pads, quilts, etc. were needed again during rationing and shortages. Flour sack prints them started getting pretty enough for little girl's dresses.  A fifty pound bag of flour had enough material even for a man's shirt and THEN some.  I had a flour sack dress once that my mother made me. I could still open up to this day a fifty pound bag of sackcloth and cut quickly without a pattern the pieces to sew a man's workshirt.  I liked that cloth.  It was oddly "wholesome".

http://pad39a.com/graph/pdb1176.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/110/286089402_f...

http://www.piecedart.com/images/presents...

http://www.babyme.cc/1801x.jpg

There are also much older fabrics used for grain sacking, like coarse jute plant fiber or burlap.  That material was useable as clothing fabric but it was horribly itchy, fell apart easily and was associated with slaves and dirt-poor poverty.

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/images/bur...

Answer 3

Sackcloth is a coarse woven fabric for making sacks. Like sailcloth is for making sails.

Patrois gave a very erudite answer and she deserves the points.

Answer 4

Thats pretty much what it is.