"For a few sacks more.... How feedsacks clothed and warmed Americans during the Depression, and later."

This was the name of an exhibition set up and hosted by the Textile Research Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands, between January and July 2018. The idea for the exhibition came as a result of a donation to the TRC in 2017 of 35 feedsacks made of printed cotton cloth. These and items collected since then reflect a story of resilience, female ingenuity, thriftiness, sustainability, art and design, national awareness, as well as economic and commercial insight for nearly fifty years, from the 1920’s to the 1960’s. It is an amazing story, and one that is now barely known outside of the USA.

The decorative versions of the feedsacks became very popular and were used for a wide range of items, including men, women and children’s clothing and household items, such as bedding (sheets, pillowcases, quilts), curtains, tablecloths, and clothes pin bags. In fact, they were used for just about anything. The exhibition includes examples of actual feedsacks, as well as clothing, toys, curtains and bags, made from them. In addition, there are numerous bed quilts made from feed sack materials, which reflect the creative use of the sacks and cloth scraps.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Small Grant Program of the USA Embassy, The Hague.

The actual exhibition is available for loan by other museums and institutions. Click here for more details about the package.

Further reading:

Jones, Lu Ann and Sunae Park (1993). “From feed bags to fashion” Textile History, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 91-104.

Nixon, Gloria (2015). Rag Darlings: Dolls from the Feedsack Era, Kansas City: Kansas City Star Quilts.

McCray, Linzee Kull (2016). Feed Sacks: The Colourful History of a Frugal Fabric, Calgary: Uppercase Publishing Inc.

Walton, Frank L. (1945). Thread of Victory, New York: Fairchild Publishing Co.

For this online exhibition:

• Author: Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood
• Web-design: Joost Koopman
• Exhibition design: Willem Vogelsang
• Publisher: TRC Leiden.
• Year of publication: 2018
• Copyright: All illustrations of objects housed in the TRC collection can be used free of charge, but please add to the caption: "Courtesy Textile Research Centre, Leiden" and the pertinent accession number of the object.

Various feedsack manufacturers produced a range of cloth toys from the 1930’s onwards. The toys were printed on both sides of the cotton bag and could be cut out, sewn together and then filled with raw cotton or something similar. These toys fall in various groups, such as the Rodkey’s Rag Darlings (1937 onwards), the Sea Island Sugar Dolls (mid-1930’s) and the Southern Flour Mills (1930’s) dolls, including the ‘Sailor Boy’. In addition, some companies produced Santa’s stockings and other seasonal fare.

Another popular group of objects in this group were the small bed quilts used for dolls. These were seen as a good method of using up small scraps, while teaching girls how to make quilts, an essential skill for many households and housewives.

Feedsack household items

A wide range of objects around the home could and was made from feedsack cloth. Many of the booklets list items such as curtains, pillowcases, table cloths, pan holders (pot holders), peg bags (clothes pin bags), laundry bags, and of course quilts of many different types.

Popular items included household towels, which ranged from coarse burlap items with stripes, to finer flour forms. The latter were often embroidered with simple motifs. Some of the designs were pre-printed onto the cloth by the manufacturers. On other occasions women would use a series of commercially available transfers. Some women, of course, simply drew designs of their own creation and artistic preference onto the cloth.

There is a beautiful poem about undergarments being made from feedsacks. The poem was written by Ada Marie Shrope from Kansas, USA (1899-1988). The writer obviously had some very vivid and personal recollections:

When I was a maiden so fair

Mama made our underwear

With little tots and Papa’s poor pay

How could she buy lingerie

Monogram’s and fancy stitches

Were not on our flour sack breeches.

Pantywaists that stood the test

With GOLD MEDAL on the chest

Little pants the best of all

With a scene I still recall

Harvesters were gleaning wheat

Right across the little seat.

Tougher than a grizzle bear

Was our flour sack underwear

Plain of fancy, three feet wide,

Stronger than a hippo’s hide

Throughout the years,

Each Jill and Jack

Wore this sturdy garb of a sack.

“Waste not – want not” was soon learned.

And “A penny saved is a penny earned”

Bedspreads, curtains, tea towels, too

Table clothes, to name a few

But best, beyond compare

Was our flour sack underwear.

One of the iconic uses of feedsacks is the making of quilts used on beds. A bed quilt is basically made up of three or more layers of cloth. The top layer, which is usually decorative, consists of a large piece of cloth that may be made of a single piece of plain cloth or multi-coloured patchwork pieces sewn together and/or designs sewn down (appliqué) onto a plain ground material. There then comes the layer of wadding (batting) for warmth, and finally, the lining or backing layer. The three layers are normally fastened together in some manner, such as by ‘tying’ (the use of small knots at regular intervals), by specific motifs and/or blocks on the top layer being stitched to the lining, or by decorative quilting. The latter consists of small running stitches that are sewn through the various layers, often with the stitches following a predetermined pattern to produce an overall, decorative effect. In many cases the whole bed quilt is decorated in this manner.

Sometimes paper templates were used in various shapes, such as triangles and hexagons for the patchwork forms. These templates can sometimes provide an indication of when the quilt was made. There are examples of quilt templates, for example, being made of dated letters, newspapers and magazines.

In the earlier examples, it is generally the backing of the quilt that is made of feed or flour sacks. Sometimes the name of the manufacturer can still be seen. But by the 1930’s more and more quilts started to include scraps of feedsack cloth into the main top designs. These are usually mixed with other materials that were popular and available at the time.

A wide range of quilt designs were made using feedsacks, including well-known forms such as Crazy quilts, Striped quilts, bowties, Grandmother’s garden, and Dresden plates.

New and traditional designs were often published in local newspapers, such as the Kansas City Star, for women to cut out and use. On other occasions quilting blocks were actually printed on cotton sacks for people to use as templates or to cover with material. If two or four blocks were given on one sack, it was necessary for the quilter to acquire up to ten sacks to make a quilt suitable for a single bed.

Not all women, however, wanted to spend time making bed quilts from hundreds of small pieces of cloth. So feedsack designers came up with the so-called ‘cheaters’, which looked like patchwork quilts from a distance, but which were in fact a multi-coloured patchwork design printed onto the ground material.

One of the most important and widespread uses of the feedsack cloth was the making of garments for men, women and children, although the vast majority of surviving garments seem to have been made for women and girls.

Many of the earlier garments took the form of underwear, as the presence of a printed ink sack label would not be seen or commented upon (one hoped).

But by the late 1920’s, more people were openly wearing flour sack garments and there are numerous images of desperately poor families living in sack tents and wearing sack garments.

The situation grow worse during the Depression in the 1930’s and the more ingenious started to make and wear a wide range of garments that cost virtually nothing. The garments included aprons, blouses, dresses, skirts and sun bonnets for women and girls, as well as shirts and trousers for men and boys.

Glamour photograph of a model wearing a feedsack and long, black gloves, USA 1957 (TRC 2017.3303). For more information, click on the illustration.In some cases, sisters were clearly recognisable in the local schools, as they often wore dresses made from the same batch of sacks. In the late 1950's there were various national campaigns to promote the making and wearing of fashionable garments made out of feedsacks. These campaigns included professional models wearing feedsacks with fashionable accessories, such as long, black gloves. The wearing of these garments, whether practical or fashionable, or indeed both, continued into the 1960’s.

It has been estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 different designs were created and used to decorate feedsacks between the 1930’s and 1960’s. The scale of production, both in terms of designing and printing, gives an indication of just how important feedsacks were to the U.S. and Canadian economies. The designs came from a wide range of sources, including the cotton industry itself, individuals and groups of professional designers, as well as from the women themselves who used the sacks.

Course, plain coloured sacks were always available. Sometimes white sacks were dyed at home by enterprising women and then given or sold to others who needed them for garments and, more often, bed quilts. The earliest designs were simple forms, such as checks (especially ginghams) and stripes. It was not long before flower designs were created, which were popular with various generations of wearers. These reflected fashionable forms, as well as styles that are so general they cannot be given a specific date.

In the 1930’s, more specific designs begin to appear, as noted by the Percy Kent Bag Company (Buffalo, New York), which employed European artists to create designs based on more fashionable motifs. Animal and insect figures became available, including a range of animals, birds, butterflies and fish. The article in the 1948 Libelle, for example, shows an American woman dressed in a fashionable wide-skirted dress decorated with stylised fish. Another popular range were embroidery designs. Sometimes these were printed onto the textile in order for somebody to actually embroider them. On other occasions the design was made to look like a piece of embroidery, especially using motifs worked in cross stitch and satin stitch.

Another range of motifs that was popular were those that were somewhat nostalgic and based on the cowboy and girl way of life, farmer’s lives (pig feeding at a trough, farms and farm land, etc), antiquated forms of transportation (coaches and early steam trains), as well as old fashioned paddle boats. There were also designs that referred to specific sporting events, such as the various horse races and race courses in the U.S., including the Kentucky Derby, Tia Juanna and Santa Anita. There are other feedsacks that include a range of buildings and scenes, such as Venice, Dutch windmills (with figures in clogs) and Southern style plantation houses.

During the 1950’s machine printing techniques improved and the range of designs further increased. In addition, popular culture was reflected in the patterns produced. At the same time more and more abstract designs were developed, which often had the appearance of painted motifs.

Feedsacks and Disney

In the late 1940’s the Percy Kent Bag Company signed a contract with the film company of Disney for the rights to reproduce images on their feedsacks. Famous cartoon figures used by them include Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, as well as figures from Disney films such as Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Davy Crocket (1955). In some cases, Percy Kent used the actual artwork of Disney illustrators for the feedsacks.

Despite all the various forms and artistic trends that came and went, the mainstay of the feedsack design repertoire remained flowers and floral motifs in their many forms!

By the 1960’s, the increased diversity and cheapness of paper and plastics for commodity packaging meant that feedsacks were no longer widely used. Slowly most of the sacks vanished from the shelves and wardrobes, and in some cases, peoples’ memories. But from 1970’s books about the Depression became more popular, including reminiscences of daily life and the use of feedsacks. More and more personal reminiscences were collected by American institutes, such as the National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C). They also collected feedsacks and related objects, as well as oral history, and developed archives relating to the history and use of feedsacks.

There were some movements to bring back decorative feedsacks and examples would be especially printed for conferences and meetings. They can be identified by the labels, especially those for flour, including far more nutritional information than was normal in the 1950’s, as well as items such as bar codes, which were introduced to the general public in the early 1990’s thanks to the development of equipment that could scan and read the codes.

The main exception to the general decline of the use of feedsacks is formed by the quilt makers, who have long been using feedsack cloth for making bed quilts of one form or another. The (re) use of old quilt tops and full quilts is more popular than ever and in some cases older tops are totally re-quilted and given a new life.

The popularity of the feedsack textiles continued well into the late 1940’s, but their use was slowly coming to an end. Cloth feedsacks were replaced by paper versions, which were considerably cheaper to produce. To help counter this development, various national groups, notably the National Cotton Council and the Textile Bag Manufacturers Association, were set up to support, develop and encourage the production of cotton sacks and their use for garments and household items. They developed a series of activities, including local and state competitions for garments, quilts and other items made from feedsacks. By intent or coincidence, Marilyn Monroe was photographed in late 1951 or early 1952 wearing a specially made fringed dress made from a burlap potato sack, in order to emphasise her ability to wear anything and make it glamourous, and to show that the potato bag itself could be glamourous. To make particular brands of feed more attractive, some manufacturers added extra cloth as a ‘gift’.

International sewing pattern companies, such as those of Burda and Simplicity, produced catalogues and patterns that were especially designed to fit the sizes of commercial feedsacks, although they were often called cotton bags to make them sound more attractive. It is noticeable that although Simplicity produced a Pattern Service system for cotton bags, their actual paper patterns do not mention the link with feedsacks. Similarly, magazines such as The Farmer started to produce fashion guides for farmer’s wives, who could copy the designs from the illustrations. Various dress patterns could be ordered through the post. Again, however, the link with feedsacks is implied rather than directly mentioned.

By the 1950’s it was not only women and girls’ garments that were being produced in feedsacks. A range of paper patterns for men and boy’s wear, literally from underpants to pyjamas and shirts were produced with the aim that they could be made using feedsacks. Nevertheless, the market of women and their needs was economically the most attractive for the producers of cotton feedsacks. So it is not so surprising that various fashion models were photographed wearing printed feedsacks to encourage the notion that sack clothing could be and was glamourous! There was even a Cotton Bag Loan Wardrobe, which included a variety of different types of garments made from decorative cottons, which toured the country to show women how feedsack material could be both practical and fashionable.

Card with printed scene of Lucille Ball wearing a feedsack dress and a bucket on her head, USA 1957 (TRC 2017.4262). For more information, click on the illustration.Lucille Ball gets a Paris gown

The American comedian, Lucille Ball, is still remembered by many for her television series called I Love Lucy, which was about her and her husband and their many (mis) adventures. The series ran from 1951-1957, with a modified version going on until 1960. One episode in particular is a comment on the wearing of feedsack clothing. It is called Lucy gets a Paris gown (no. 147, aired March 1956) and describes how Lucy and her friend, Ethel Mertz, go to Paris with their husbands. Both women want Parisian dresses designed by the French couturier, Jacques Marcel (a fictional name). They are persuaded that the latest fashion are outfits made of horse feed buckets and coarse potato sacks. The two women walk around in these garments until they realise that they had been made fools of by their spouses. They force their husbands to buy real Marcel gowns. However, the next day they see French models wearing outfits, designed by Marcel, which are identical to their sack dresses and eccentric headwear. Memories of this and other I Love Lucy episodes linger on in the American memory and in 2002 Mattel, Inc., produced a Barbie doll version of Lucy wearing her sack outfit. In 2008, the same company made a joint set of Lucy and Ethel dolls wearing buckets and sack garments.

The Second World War (1939-1945) saw the rationing of various items in North America.

Feedsacks were exempt from rationing in order to persuade people to move from the more robust sacking that was needed for the war effort, to lighter and cheaper cotton bags that, as an added benefit, could also be used for clothing and household items. As noted by one American official, Frank Walton (although he apparently underestimated the already existing feedsack industry for clothing):

Millions of yards are required each year for these purposes [feed and flour bags]. Some of these bags when received as a container are even used in many homes for towels and aprons and even dresses. One enterprising concern is even printing a pattern on the fabric to make its conversion to an apron or a dress easier after it has carried the flour to the home (Frank Walton 1945:179).

The use of these sacks and bags was seen as being patriotic and thrifty. At the same time the cloth was marketed as being practical and fashionable. Numerous booklets were distributed to encourage women to produce more and more garments and other items at home, using these simple and US-manufactured materials. At one point it was estimated that three million American women and children were wearing feedsack material in some form or other.

In May 1943, sack and bag sizes were officially defined by the War Production Board in order to help prevent waste and to make it easier for the factories, millers and housewives to know exactly how much material was required. These measurements were based on standard sack capacities of 1, 5, 10, 15, 50 and 100 pounds. A bag that contained five pounds (2.25 kg) of sugar, for example, provided 1/3 yard (33 cm) of cloth, while a 100-pound (45.40 kg) bag provided slightly more than 1 yard (0.915 cm) of material, with four sacks providing enough for one adult woman’s dress. These sizes remained in use for decades.

At the same time, many designs on the cloth reflected American life and important world events. One of the most famous is that produced by the Percy Kent Bag Company and is known as Kent’s Cloth of the United Nations, which was produced in c. 1944. It includes the names of all the allied countries, as well as images of war events, including the campaigns of the British 8th Army in North Africa and of course, Pearl Harbour (7th December 1942). This design became very popular and was reprinted on various occasions. Another side of the story is that millions of sacks were sent to the various war zones throughout the world. As noted by Frank Walton, this caused supply problems:

Foreign shipments have helped to increase our supply problem because these bag containers go out of the country and do not return for further use whereas, when used for delivery in this country [US], they are collected and used several times. While most of the bags that go to a foreign point are used to advantage by the military forces or even by civilians for packaging or clothes, that does not help our problem here. The millions of bags that are going abroad must be replaced, thus increasing the demands here for more cloth (Walton 1945:180).

The 29th October of 1929 witnessed the Wall Street Crash. It was followed by a series of droughts and harvest failures that resulted in the ‘Great Depression’, which was to last over a decade in America. The acute lack of money meant that many already poor families literally had very little to wear. There are numerous contemporary photographs of women and children dressed in sacks and very little else. Not surprisingly, the widespread availability of a specific type of cheap material that could be used to create garments became very popular and the bag and sack companies, following on earlier developments, started to produce an even wider range of materials, qualities, sizes and designs.

Girl dressed in a flour sack, early 1930's (Library of Congress).

Before the Depression, the brand names of the various bag and product companies were often printed on the cloth with special inks that could be relatively easily washed off, so the sacks could be used for clothing. Such sacks often came with washing instructions to help the housewife remove the printed messages. By the 1920’s paper labels started to appear, which were deliberately introduced because they could be simply soaked off. These labels became more common during the Depression when the sacks were widely used for clothing.

In the 1930’s, women came together in groups to sew, swop and save for particular printed patterns. In addition, itinerant pedlars travelled with empty feedsacks to more remote areas to satisfy the demand for the printed cloth. More and more commercial, and even academic groups were set up to inform women and girls about how to use feedsacks for a variety of purposes. One of these projects was the Georgia Emergency Relief Administration, who organised:

Classes for young girls who longed for pretty things but could not afford to buy them and could not make them. They were taught to admire real beauty and cleanliness and to make the most of simple and inexpensive materials. Emphasis was placed on the use of cotton material, buying on a limited budget, remodelling and suitability. They were taught to use patterns, to design, to fit one another and to make dresses from Dixie Crystal Sugar sacks, etc. (Jones and Park 1993:93).

Many of these textiles were sent to Canada, where they became an important source of textiles as well. Some of the dresses in the exhibition actually derive from this country, rather than the U.S.