h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Flour Sack: Depression Fashion Tip - A87854764
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

For those who want the video to go with that Dolly Parton song lyric, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NidVUCC42N4

My idea with this guide entry would be to take the three public domain pictures from the Library of Congress and reproduce them on the page. They're linked to in the text for now.

I have seen a flour sack turned into a little girl's dress in under two hours by an expert seamstress. My sister misplaced her suitcase on the way to my grandparents' farm once - and that was my grandmother's solution on a Saturday night.

This is interesting and as well written as ever.

I hadn't heard of women making clothes from flour sacks. But my mother told me she'd made clothes for my brothers from parachute silk during the war. It makes me feel very wasteful.

I don't think I've got any useful crits.

I remember reading about that parachute silk.

I always thought that sounded like a luxurious fabric.

On second thoughts I have a question. Was most of this sewing done by hand, or did women have machines?

Machines. Often treadle machines. No electricity required - important if you didn't live in the path of the TVA's electrification program.

Many US people didn't have modern conveniences back then. Have you ever read 'The Grapes of Wrath'? There's a passage you might find kind of moving, kind of funny. About the Joad kids in the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp - a sort of refugee camp for Okies.

They encounter their first-ever flush toilet - and they think they broke it when it flushes.

Treadle sewing machine, as used by my grandmother:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.30883/

This is interesting indeed

My only question is: what is lye soap?

I played with a parachute at an after school club a few times - it was distinctive fabric, and I don't know what it would have been like as clothing, but I really enjoyed the airy sensation when we all held the parachute and lifted it up so it inflated for a while

What a wonderful question! Times change so quickly. Our neighbour - a lady of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction - used to give us a bar of her homemade lye soap every year. My mother swore by it for 'ring around the collar'. It is, of course, the original homemade soap, in use for ages.

Here's a recipe:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/lets-make-some-soap-a-recipe-for-a-simple-lye-soap.aspx

As they say, be careful when making it. Lye is caustic. However, all those 'modern' folk online asking if lye soap is 'safe', er, compared to what? All those chemicals you're putting on your bodies from the high-priced cosmetics industry?

When I get a chance, I'll make sure this entry glosses lye soap and mentions treadle sewing machines.

Thanks for reminding me what the younger generation and more civilised people don't know about how they lived back then.

Ah, I know a little bit about soap (sodium stearate and all that), from Port Sunlight A87831778 and I've heard of Carbolic Soap, but not Lye Soap. I see they're essentially the same sort of thing - soap with added disinfectant.

From the Colourful Prints link, it says the brand names were removed by "soaking the brand in kerosene or rubbing it with unsalted lard *then* washing it with lye soap" so I don't know whether your paragraph needs tweaking - I guess lard on its own could remove dye if the dye was fat soluble, but does the soap play a role in that process? Or is it just that lye soap is good at getting rid of the resulting grease?

I think you're right about the grease part. Let me tweak it, without letting that detail take over the paragraph.

Tweaked, you people. And a link about the treadle sewing machine.

Well done Dimitri, another interesting slice of history.

I have hesitated on commenting here because I do not want to take the thread too far off topic, and there are several personal comments I could add. I will not even talk about my 1917 sewing machine

The one thing I think might be a good addition is a brief mention of the sack materials themselves. The Inuit shirt is obviously burlap but finer ground products needed a closer weave using flax or even cotton. The finer dresses you link are obviously from a better grade of cloth than course animal feed.

Just a thought, but many readers today might not understand what sacks are.



F S

Yes - I was slightly confused about that, too. A "Sack" conjures up a rough Hessian bag to my mind, but obviously that would be far too open-weaved to hold flour. From the title, however, I was still picturing people in "sack and ashes". The photos linked to belie that first impression.

So - was it 100% cotton? Was there a linen content? (burlap is mainly linen, isn't it?) If so, why was flour kept in that kind of bag, which would surely not be very waterproof? What kind of weave was used? How thick was the thread?

You link to photos of the finished garments, but many questions could be answered if we could see one of a sack of flour - the raw material, so to speak. Do you think you could dig one of those up? The embroidered variety that you show are unpicked and even have fringes.

You do mention that they are 25-pound bags, but an idea of the size of bag would be helpful. I can't imagine, for example, that the length of a 25 lb bag would be enough to make a trouser leg or a dress without a seam at the waist.... Those curtains, too, they must have a seam somewhere about halfway.

Hmm... Unless the bags one long length folded in half and joined together with side seams?

And were these bags only available in the US (and Belgium?) Were they sold to the general public (25 pounds of flour is a lot for one household!) or did people beg for them at the baker's?

Oops - lots of questions. Just wondered.

What is a feed mill?

Y'all always ask SO MANY questions. Like a bunch of literate four-year-olds.

I'll try to answer SOME of them. If I can. But trying to put all that into one guide entry... That's how those entries turn into 5000 words of boring...

Last question first: A feed mill, according to Merriam Webster, is 'a mill in which stock feeds are prepared.'

Oh, you wanted to know what they do there? They grind (mill) different grains into animal fodder (feed). The results go into feed sacks.

In parts of the US, the word 'sack' is synonymous with 'bag'. As in 'paper sack'. It has nothing to do with the material involved. It could be a mylar sack.

Cotton. The bags were made of pure cotton. Gingham and percale. Of course you know what that's like... At the time, 3 yards of percale cost 60 cents from Sears, and gingham 40 cents. But it was free with two or three 100-pound bags of flour. I will go back and change that, I underestimated. And I'll give the dimensions. And we're talking about rural people - they bought in quantity, not like the daily town shoppers. A trip 'to town' was never more than a weekly event, as it took all day. Feed, of course, was bought in huge quantities. We're talking about farmers with livestock. One bag has chicken feed in it, and the label advertises 'a 50-cent value in cloth'.

And yes, the sacks didn't have a seam at the bottom - what an astute observation! You can tell I don't sew much, I didn't think of mentioning that.

Thanks for telling me more of what's confusing - or what people wanted to know. I'll go back and work those things in - this will take time, because getting all this info in without adding endless paragraphs of boredom is harder than...well, not. But I'll put the work in on it today.

And everybody do me a favour: look in your closets. Do you OWN anything made of gingham or percale? Those fabrics built rural America.

Okay.

Serious rewriting has taken place here.

The info you all desired has been inserted throughout the narrative, where I thought it made sense. I hope the picture of these bags is clearer now.

I've added a paragraph or two, but the entry hasn't run away from me yet. Which is the important thing: I want people to enjoy reading this, not to feel like, 'Aw, this is more than I ever wanted to know about the subject.'

I added another quote that I thought was interesting.

I didn't explain feed mills, but I think it might be clearer in context now. Let me know if it's still confusing.

And let me know if anything still doesn't read right.

Thanks again for the help! I tease, but I really appreciate it. The editorial process is what makes the Guide good.

Thank you thank you! You have achieved your aim admirably!

Great! Thanks for rereading.

Very good, it adds a lot of good information.

I think part of my confusion came from the opening quote , I have always equated 'Gunny Sack' with burlap, or Hessian cloth (thank you TC one of my favourite parts of h2g2 is learning new words from other cultures). This is usually made of jute or sisal, similar to hemp - but not as much fun to smoke

Many years ago I purchased a calico shirt that was advertised as an authentic 19th century reproduction. After many years it became ripped and the cloth started to unravel. I cold see that each of the threads had its own colour and the pattern was woven in and not printed. This is not in any way relevent to the Entry, but I thought is was interesting.



F S

That IS cool information!

I'm fond of the Peterman Shirt, myself. Classic is classic.

Remember how, in the 'Hitchhiker's Guide', the Golgafrincham ship had 'brown Hessian wall-weave'? Now you've straightened that out for me. I mean, I guessed at what it looked like, because I'd seen similar things in Europe, but I didn't make the connection with burlap, jute, or sisal. Wow.

How well we educate ourselves by listening to each other!

But I hope you never smoked jute. Or that if you did, you didn't inhale...

Never jute, as far as I know, too much of the real stuff around here.

Just for the record, if you ever find yourself spending a evening in a Native American lodge and they start to pass around a pipe, I have never seen one that contained any tobacco product.



F S