Feeding fashion: Historical Museum exhibit focuses on upcycling of feed sacks
In what one milling company called “A Bag of Tricks,” feed, flour and sugar sacks during the Great Depression and World War II eras provided a frugal option for fabric.
“Thrift Style,” a traveling exhibition on display until Oct. 7 at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, offers what museum officials call a nostalgic view into how consumers and companies turned a common commercial item into garments, quilts and even toys.
The exhibition features more than 40 items from the Historic Costume and Textile Museum at Kansas State University that were donated by alum Richard D. Rees. Rees’ family owned a farm supply store in Coffeyville that carried patterned sacks in the 1940s and 1950s. As an adult, Rees started collecting vintage sacks, garments and other material marketed during that period of upcycling.
The sacks were typically made of cotton at the time, and it wasn’t uncommon to buy items like feed, flour and sugar in bulk.
In the 1920s and ‘30s, when milling companies realized that homemakers had started repurposing the sacks into other items for their families, “they started making more attractive patterns,” said Jami Frazier Tracy, the historical museum’s curator of collections.
“But it wasn’t out of kindness. It was a marketing strategy that benefited the consumer and benefited the company. Now people were going to buy products … because of a pattern.”
The companies also started promoting the reuse of the sacks by publishing how-to brochures and booklets with designs, mending instructions and other suggestions. The exhibition includes a couple of examples of those publications, including “A Bag of Tricks for Home Sewing” brochure and another created by the U.S. government to encourage the continued upcycling during World War II, when fabric was in limited supply for consumers.
One manufacturer that created a gingham pattern even applied for a patent on the pattern.
Several uncut sacks in the exhibition give an idea of the variety of the patterns that were produced, ranging from whimsical ones, including the comic strip Red Ryder cowboy character and other child-appealing patterns, to more sophisticated and textured patterns suitable for dresses.
Some manufacturers even printed sacks with designs for specific products, like a table runner or a stuffed fabric doll.
Besides garments and feed sacks, the exhibition also includes quilts and a printing plate from the Stafford Co. Flour Mill in Hudson, Kansas. The exhibition is located in the museum’s second-floor West Gallery, adjacent to the drug store display area.
As a companion exhibit, Tracy has curated more than a half-dozen vintage fashion items from the museum’s permanent collection that she purchased over the years from area thrift stores. Many of the labels on display in the third-floor exhibit, “Thrifted Finds,” were carried by downtown Wichita department stores, Tracy said.
The museum is collaborating with Nina Winter of TISSU Sewing Studios to present two free fabric workshops in conjunction with “Thrift Style.”
Visitors can sew a stuffed charm during a drop-in workshop from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 8, and make a bag with thrifted and recycled fabrics during a two-hour workshop from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14. Reservations for the latter workshop are requested by not required.
Marla Day, the curator of K-State’s Historic Costume and Textile Museum who put together “Thrift Style,” will give a Senior Wednesday talk, “Waste Not, Want Not: Reimagining Fashion through Thrift Style” from 10 to 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 25, in the museum’s second-floor DeVore Auditorium. Doors open at 9:30 p.m.; admission is $2, free for museum members. Seating is limited to 60.
‘Thrift Style’ exhibition
What: traveling exhibition on the Depression- and World War II-era upcycling of feed sacks into garments and other household items
Where: Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, 204 S. Main
When: through Oct. 5, museum hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 1-5 p.m. Saturdays & Sundays
Admission: $5, $2 for children ages 6-12; free admission on Sundays
More information: 316-265-9314, wichitahistory.org
