Feed sack dress
They were made at home, usually by women, using the cotton sacks in which flour, sugar, animal feed, seeds, and other commodities were packaged, shipped, and sold.
[2] The bags of the time were hand-sewn at home from rough cloth made of hand-spun yarn, sometimes stamped with the name of the farmer.
[2][3] A barrel held 196 pounds (89 kg) of flour, and the first commercial feed sacks were sized to hold fractions of that amount.
[2] The first commercially produced sacks were made in the late 1800s of osnaburg, a coarse white or brown cotton, and were stamped with a logo or label, and burlap.
[5] In October 1924 Asa T. Bales, a millworker from Missouri, filed a patent for "a sack, the cloth of which is adapted to be used for dress goods after the product has been removed or consumed.
"[6] Bales assigned the patent to the George P. Plant Milling Company of St. Louis, Missouri, which by 1925 were manufacturing Gingham Girl sacks.
[2][4] A paragraph in a short story in an 1892 issue of Arthurs Home Magazine said, "So, that is the secret of how baby looked so lovely in her flour sack: just a little care, patience and ingenuity on the mother's part.
"[4] By the beginning of the 20th century, flour sacks were produced in a variety of fabrics of tighter weave such as percale and sheeting and often printed in various colors and designs, and recycled for clothing and other purposes.
[2][3][4] By the end of the decade Bemis Brothers in Tennessee, Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills in Georgia, and Percy Kent of Buffalo, New York, were producing decorative sacks.
[5] Several educational institutions taught classes in how to use feed sacks, including The Household Science Institute, which produced a monthly newsletter called Out of the Bag and a series of booklets called Sewing with Cotton Bags, which gave instructions on how to use feed sacks.
[5] During the Great Depression the popularity of the sacks increased, as they were seen as a source of free garment-making material for impoverished families.
[4] According to Margaret Powell, speaking at the Textile Society of America's 2012 symposium:[4] In 1927, three yards of dress print cotton percale (the typical amount of fabric needed for an average size adult dress) could cost sixty cents when purchased from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.
[2] However, it is the activities of these farm wives, clothing their families in feed sacks, that offer a view of life that was unique to rural communities during this time period.
[12] During World War II it was estimated that 3 million women and children in the United States were wearing feed sack clothing at any given point in time.
[2] Mary Derrick Chaney, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, recalled:[10] Even before prestigious labels ever appeared on jeans and blouses for ordinary little girls, the origins of clothes were a status symbol.
In the rural South, mothers and daughters drew the battle lines not between name brands, but between "homemade" and "ready made."
