To say that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, money was tight and jobs were scarce would be an understatement. The economic recession caused by the stock market crash of 1929 upended the American way of life.
Housewives living during the Great Depression had to quickly learn to save money. They had to take advantage of every resource available to them. Thanks to the Textile Bag Manufacturers Association and the Millers National Federation, housewives in the 1930s were helped to stay fashionable despite extreme poverty. How did they do it? By printing colorful patterns on flour bags , the clothes can be recycled for use in clothing for the whole family. As you can see from these color photos, many of the flour sack dresses were so skillfully crafted that it's almost impossible to tell whether the material was originally used for a different purpose.
In the 1930s, it took about three yards of fabric to make a basic piece of women's clothing. Buying this material at a dry goods store cost 60 to 75 cents, but in the 1930s the average weekly income was less than $15, and $15 was needed to feed a family, pay rent, and so on. They must save every penny and ensure nothing is wasted.
During the Industrial Revolution , when commercial textiles and sewing machines were invented, wheat growers who transported and sold flour in wooden barrels switched to using more cost-effective cloth bags. Originally, the sacks were burlap, but those were replaced with a finer weave to prevent more flour from seeping out. Consumers noticed the quality of flour bags and were recycling them into towels, rags and other household items long before the Great Depression.
Mill workers across the country knew that their customers were turning their empty flour sacks into clothing, and of course they were doing it themselves. So in the mid-1920s, a Missouri miller patented a flour sack designed to be sewn into clothing, and the company began selling gingham flour bags. Plaid sacks have become a selling point with their unique red and white plaid pattern. The company noticed an uptick in sales as housewives wanted the sack to make clothes for their daughters and themselves.
Factories across the country are taking notice. They also believed they could increase sales and gain new customers by using patterned flour bags. The Textile Bag Manufacturers Association and the Millers National Federation began offering classes and pamphlets to show housewives how to get the most out of the fabric in flour sacks, and they provided patterns and techniques for making clothes from flour sacks. The Textile Bag Manufacturers Association even standardized the dimensions of flour bags so housewives always knew exactly how much fabric was in each bag.
As the Great Depression dragged on, patterned flour bags in a variety of colors and prints were available from nearly every factory in the country. There’s no shame in wearing an outfit that started out as a flour sack, everyone wore them. Some patterns were more popular than others, with women forming groups to exchange flour sacks with each other, and even some entrepreneurial souls running their own small businesses by buying and reselling empty flour sacks.
During World War II , all available resources were devoted to the war effort, so the flour sack dress remained popular. After the war, however, the United States experienced a period of prosperity when families could finally afford new fabrics and even ready-to-wear clothing. In addition, commodities such as flour began to be packaged in paper or plastic instead of cloth, and the era of these flour bags being fashionable came to an end.
