Egg Mash Underwear
Our mother was good at sewing. She sewed all of our clothes, which was a big job. She made our underwear out of egg mash sacks. We raised chickens, and bought egg mash in 100-lb. bags. Egg mash was feed for the chickens. These bags had to be washed and bleached often to get out all of the print. On wash day, it was hard to tell which bloomers belonged to whom, so our mother had us embroider our names across the front of all those that belonged to us. This served a double purpose. Not only did it help her sort the clothes, it also kept us busy for awhile and we learned to embroider a plain outline stitch. This often spurred us on to do more interesting embroidery later, and we all learned to embroider, knit, crochet and sew.