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.