When I was a child, no one in our neighborhood had a way to haul loose grain.
The grain was sacked out of the threshing machine and hauled either to the granary or, if it was to be sold, directly to the feed mill.
After we began to use combines, they were always equipped with a sacking attachment rather than a grain tank. As a teenager, it was my job to ride the combine and fill and tie the sacks.
We always used a piece of binder twine that was about 18 or so inches long and tied the sacks with a miller’s knot. Therefore, I never sewed a sack like they did on the big combines used in the wheat fields of California, Oregon and Washington.
Sewing sacks
In the February 1925 issue of The American Thresherman, I ran across the following directions for sewing closed a sack of grain and thought it might be interesting.
The needle used was called a spring-eye sack needle with a broad, flat, double-edged blade, a spring eye (there was a split along one edge of the eye so the twine could be placed at this split and forced into the eye), and the part of the eye toward the point sharpened to cut the twine when pushed forcibly back against a loop of the fastened string.
Needles came in 4- and 5-inch lengths and were selected to fit the user’s hand. The needle was held with the blade between the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand, the eye against the lower part of the palm, and the point projecting about 3/4 of an inch beyond the fingers.
The blade edges were kept sharp with a small whetstone and the cutting part of the eye with a small flat file.
The twine came in skeins which, just before use, were cut at one end, resulting in a bundle of doubled strings about 45-inches long, each of which could be easily and quickly pulled from the bundle without tangling.
The first two sacks were sewed and piled to form a seat for the sewer. The bundle of twine was placed across the seat at the sewers right hand (if he was right-handed) with the looped end to the right.
The needle was hung on the loop of one string and the sewer “sat lightly” on the ends of the twine bundle to provide a little tension in order to keep more than one string from being pulled out at a time.
The well-filled grain sack was placed between the sewer’s knees with the seam up the side of the sack away from the sewer.
The sack edges were brought together with the left edge slightly higher than the other and the grain was crowded into the top corners of the sack.
Clove hitch
Following is an edited version of the sewing instructions: Take the threaded needle in the right hand. With the left hand, palm up and well toward the right side, lay the string, nearly to its cut end, across the left palm and roll the left hand toward the body, passing the fingers over and then under the string and leaving a complete wrap around the hand.
Using the right hand, make a quick turnaround the farthest ear in a counter-clockwise direction. Then grasp the ear with the left hand and let the loop of string slide off that hand and around the ear, forming a loose clove hitch.
Twist the ear firmly in a counter-clockwise direction with the left hand and pull the string tight with the right. When this is done correctly, there should be 4 or 5 inches of the cut end of the string sticking out beyond the ear and the left edge of the sack will overlap the right.
Take the first stitch close to the ear by sticking the needle point through both edges of the sack just below the hem. Let go of the needle blade and push it nearly through with the palm of the hand.
Roll the hand to the left over the seam, grasp the needle and pull the string through. As subsequent stitches are being made, use the left hand to pull the sack edges together and to tuck the right edge under the left.
Make three stitches in quick succession and then pull the string tight, using both hands if necessary.
Stitches
Space the stitches evenly; about 1 inch apart so as to end up with eight to 12 stitches, depending upon the size and weight of the grain in the sack. (The smaller and heavier the grain, the more stitches are required.)
To form the second ear, hold the needle to the right of the sack and place the left hand, palm up, under the string. Roll the left hand toward the body, with the fingers passing over and then under the string, forming a wrap around the hand.
Grasp the ear with the fingers of the left hand and let the string slide off the hand and around the ear. Twist the ear firmly in a clockwise direction and pull the string tight. Then repeat the motion, forming another loop and a clove hitch around the ear.
As the string is pulled tight the last time, hold the needle so the string pulls against the sharpened part of the eye. With a quick jerk, cut the string and immediately hang the needle on an unused loop of twine ready for the next sack.
On to the next
As soon as the sack was sewed, the sewer tipped it onto the combine’s sack chute or tipping board, grabbed his needle, and prepared to sew the next full sack.
When I first read this, I couldn’t figure out the maneuvers to make the clove hitches around the sack ears. However, with a little experimentation and practice, I found that it does work.
During the 1920s, owners of the big combines had begun to modify their machines by the addition of bulk grain tanks so the clean grain could be loaded directly into wagons and hauled to the granary or elevator.
Before long, skillful sack sewers were no more than memories and more jobs were lost to automation.
Hello, I enjoyed the article on sack sewing as there is not much info out there on this subject. I have been a member of the Puget Sound Antique Tractor and Machinery Assoc. Up in Lynden, WA. Since my father and a handful of his friends started their club almost 50 yrs ago. I myself am the proud owner of a model H Eagle which my father gifted to me about 40 years ago. He was blessed with 2 daughters, but one week out of the year my sister and I stepped into our coveralls and became the boys he never had, to this day we give’em hell come threshing time.
I have been trying to find a supplier of thread for sack sewing for a local event thats about to take place. My landlord, who’s family actually owned the local grainery and feed store back in the day is just beside himself as the sack sewing face is a competition that is taken very seriously by he and the few old timers that are still around that actually practiced this forgotten art out in the field.
Any information I can get on the tread, ie name, gauge, what it was made of would be helpful.
Thank you, Renee Hetterly
Dear Renee, My first experience with sack sewing was in 1953(age 13.) At 15 I bought the Massey Harris 21A and did a little local work until graduation from high school. I thought I would be needing twine so I bought a whole roll; maybe 1-200 ft left. Let me know how much you want. HW 406.839.0776
Sam,
I really appreciate your article on grain sack sewing. I have lived most of my life on the family farm in the Yakima Valley. When I was a kid my father explained how it was done. I understood that you used clove hitches to tie the ears but not how to do it as fast as they had to. Your explanation is plain enough that I can do the job myself if I still had some real gunnysacks. Not fast enough to actually work with the old-timers, but I could do a respectable job on a few feed sacks out in the barn. Somewhere I still have his old sack needle. It is still as shiny as it was a century ago.
Before they invented the combine you have pictured with the article, they used stationary threshing machines. They used a binding machine in the field to bundle the grain in manageable bundles and then hauled them to the threshing machine on horse drawn wagons. There they separated the grain from the straw and bagged the wheat for transport to the elevator for storage.
One of my father’s uncles worked harvest on a stationary threshing machine in the Palouse the summer he was fourteen. He was the bagger. He hooked an empty sack under the grain chute, changed the bags when they were full, sewed them closed and carried the full sacks to the stack. He said that they started stacking the grain sacks far away from the threshing machine so they didn’t have as far to carry the sacks in the afternoon when they were tired. He came back to the farm in Brush Prairie near Vancouver Washington able to lift a hundred pound sack of wheat onto his shoulder with one hand. He said there was a trick to it. My father said the biggest part of the trick was to be extremely strong.
Again, thank you for your explanation.
I am in the process of writing my childhood memories for my children.
I was born in Wallaroo South Australia and used to watch my father sew bags of wheat,
We would go to a local farm and dad would receive skeins of hemp and a map of paddocks and the quantity of bags, in stacks two rows of full bags carn’t remember the quantities. Dad would sew all day if bags were available. Plagued by flys we had small capusels about 1 ingh long break the end an squeeze onto your hand and onto exposed body parts. mum used to make huge quantities of tea and we had cool water from our water bag
I used to watch the warfies load the bags physically onto a large net which was then hauled onto the waiting ship.
Anybody know where to obtain real sack sewing split-eye needles these days?
Thanks!
Faith
anicopia@yahoo.com
I realise it’s a long time. Similar needles are available from jjneedles.com. Curved needles 3″ to 8″ long. They aren’t split at the eye.
I grew up in the late 50s and early 60s in the Spokane Valley, WA and learned to sew sacks on an old combine when we thrashed white beans. I thought I’d never forget how to sew a sack but, come some 60 years later, I could not remember how to do what seemed second nature. This article brought back the memories, if not the skill. Thank for a trip back in time.
Bill Redinger