Wearing feedsack dresses

Writer Eva Ridenour sent me this recollection of wearing feedsack dresses.

My two sisters and I all had feedsack dresses that our mother made from the same pink flowered pattern. It had a plain white insert in the front and we wore them only when we were "dressed up." I have a picture of the three of us when I was about six or seven years old and my youngest sister was about two.

Although we were town kids dad raised chickens and hogs therefore, he needed to buy food at the feed store. Mom always went along to pick out the kind of print for the feed and saved up until she had enough to make the dresses.

I remember wearing them until I was about ten. Then I think feed started coming in paper sacks, or else she got too busy doing other things to make anymore feed sack dresses.

 

Comments

[kids dresses]

I'm wondering what a feedsack dress would look like? Is it like a sack with no curvature at all?

[Carolyn]

Like a dress made out of any other cloth, for the most part.

Feedsacks came in several weights of material, mostly a fairly heavy cotton, with a variety of designs. Floral designs were among the most popular. Almost all women were accustomed to making clothes, usually choosing the design they liked from the tissue-paper patterns sold by several companies. You pinned the various pieces of the pattern to the cloth (much trickier than it sounds), cut out the pieces, fitted them onto the future wearer, and sewed them together.

One woman told me her mother never used a pattern in making skirts for little girls. She tied a piece of string to a pencil to use in measuring the size, cut out piece, and gathered at the waist.

Thanks for asking.