When they realized that poverty-stricken women were using sacks to make clothes for their children, some flour mills started using flowered fabric for their sacks in 1939
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Ha flowered
Probably were also able to cut costs by being able to source remaindered bolts of fabric.
Example of using business for good. Nice.
My grandpa told me abut going to one of his high school dances, and a girl there was wearing a dress made out of a sugar sack, with the word sugar emblazoned on her rear end. He laughed uncontrollably every time he thought about it.
My Grandmother was around in that era.
The average woman from her ocuntry had homemaking skills at the Martha Stewart level. Being an immigrant, money was tight. My mother loved to tell a story how my uncle needed a suit so my grandmother cnnibalized old linen towels and made him a white suit that was so nice looking that he got compliments on it all of the time.
Teenage girl: Do you like my new dress made of a flour sack? I know it is a bit short and tight, but look at the little flowers!
Teenage boy: Hell yeah! I got a pair of shorts made from a flower sack too, oh and look, it is Self-Raising!!
My girl cousins would get dresses made from these and my boy cousins got shirts made of them. As the cousins were older then me and my sisters, we got the hand me downs. My grand mother and aunts all saved the cloth and would get together and trade to get enough of a pattern to make the clothes. We ate off the farm, traded hogs to get money for shoes ( one pair a year). Some of the best times of my life (74 years old)
It also sold a ton of flour. Wives would go in and pick the one that she wanted. Plain sacks didn’t sell.
In those days, a sack of flour didn’t last that long. My grandmother had 9 kids and a husband. She baked all the bread and made noodles regularly.
Think how much bread 9 kids could eat in a week…
Had no idea, how cool was that!?
Wasn’t just flowers either. Was a lot of different patterns, including patterns and cut outs for cloth dolls.
Why not just GIVE THEM SOME CLOTHES, YOU JERKS?
I love this. Nothing like hard times to bring out stories like this one. We are spoiled today.
My mom has a throw-quit that my grandma pieced by hand out of muslin and these sacks.
This was not done as charity or out of the kindness of their hearts. This was done to sell more flour
My mother made me shirts and my sisters dresses from these.
Animal feed sacks were made the same way. Woman would collect and trade patterns that they liked and there were even classes that you could take on making dresses. Labels were either removable paper ones or made with water soluble ink so they could be washed off.
My wife and I live in a rural area and any time we’re in a small town we like to visit the local history museum and we’ve seen a few of those old sack dresses. If you didn’t know what they were you’d never know. The material they used is particularly nice stuff.
In the UK during the war as well as some flour bags having printed patterns, they put the paper labels on with flour paste based glue to make removal easier & also published patterns for cloth saving designs.
My mother-in-law had to wear dresses made out of these and she gave me her perspective of hating wearing the clothes because only the poor kids wore dresses made from the flour sacks. I have some vintage flour sack material and was showing her, all excited, and now I know it’s not a good memory for the people (some at least) that had to wear them.
Dad would tell stories of his mother taking the kids to the dry goods store to let them pick out the pattern they wanted for their shirts
This is so touching! Look at Mr. kind eyes here!
This is so neat!!!
Humanity at its finest
If this happened now the flour mills would start using something impossible to make clothes out of
I always love being reminded of this
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
My mom, sister and lots of girls at school had flour sack dresses. Just for a moment, lost in a memory, it felt like I was ten years old again.
I still have a very cute jacket my great grandmother made from a flour sack.
My mom has purchased some of these patterned sacks for making quilts. I think she got them in the Amish country in the 2010s.
Born in 1947, I remember flour sack patterned clothing when very young. I had forgotten this.
reduce, reuse, recycle!