Today I heard about how in 1939, Kansas Wheat decided to start using patterned fabrics for their flour sacks due to many women using these sacks to create clothing for their children. My first thought was: How amazing — if it’s true. So I had to look into it to find out more!
The Truth of Patterned Flour Sacks
Cotton sacks for distribution of bulk products like flour have been used since the 1800s, when wooden boxes were no longer the best packaging option. Homemakers saw use in this material packaging and started to find uses for them around the home, for example cutting them up into dish towels. Due to changes in materials & colours of the sacks, farm women eventually began recycling this material and using it to create clothes.
In 1924, Asa T. Bales, a millworker from Missouri, filed a patent for cotton sacks for which the cloth could be adapted into dress goods after the product had been removed or used. He did this with a plan to assign the patent to the George P. Plant Milling Company, Missouri. By 1925 George P. Plant Milling Company were manufacturing ‘Gingham Girl’ sacks.
In 1925 the Textile Bag Manufacturers Association was created, and working alongside the Millers National Federation it encouraged home sewing projects using feed sacks.
Now, how does this relate to Kansas Wheat creating the patterned flour sacks? By the 1930s many companies caught and saw the creation of patterned sacks as a key marketing method, so they followed suit. Hence Kansas Wheat creating their patterned flour sacks.
Due to the war and our economic factors ‘feed sack dresses’ saw great popularity between the 1920s and the early 1960s.
Accidentally Environmentally Friendly
What stuck out for me when I read about these cotton sacks, was how environmentally friendly this marketing decision was. Ultimately, home makers couldn’t afford to waste the material from the flour sacks, so came up with innovative ways to recycle and repurpose the material. Businesses saw this as an opportunity for marketing, and aimed to create a reason for people to choose their product due its design. In doing so they provided cost effective & environmentally friendly material for families to use when making clothes.
A key factor in this story is that the decisions of both homemakers and businesses at the time lead to recyclable and repurposable product packaging, which not only supported households, in a time where waste could not be afforded, but also supported the business.
Business growth should not be at the expensive of the general public and most definitely not at the expense of the environment. But how is it that we lost the importance of reusing and repurposing products, like fabrics being used as packaging and then turned into clothing, for this throw away culture that is now seen as ‘normal’?