Feed sack clothing

I apologize for not remembering where I read this last week (on the Facebook feed? or NY Times), but I read an interesting blurb about how during the depression people make clothing from the cloth covering flour sacks.  The article said this stopped during the war because of rationing.  They started making the flour sacks out of paper.  I found this personally interesting since I was born in 1942 and
grew up on a dairy farm (though during the war years my father left the farm to weld in Virginia).  He had a keen eye and welded a straight bead, later working on the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel.  He hated farm life but had too many children to move away from the family farm.  Anyway, I digress.  I vividly remember as a 5 or 6 or 7 year-old accompanying my father to the local feed grinder.  We took our own dried corn--and honestly I can't remember another component.  However, I do remember that my father had orders to bring back at least 2 feed sacks in a pattern, 3 being better.  We had a herd of about one hundred, so there were many feed sacks.

My grandmother took the feed sacks and made me 3 dresses a year with a gathered skirt and short, puffy sleeves.  The collar, sash, and trim on the sleeves were from about a 1/4 yd of purchased solid fabric.  I was a skinny child and that full, gathered skirted dress with puffy sleeves made my spindly arms and legs look far thinner than they actually were.  Sigh!  This was my annual wardrobe until I entered the 7th grade.  Then my father gave me an allowance and I was allowed to plan my own wardrobe, much of it purchased at Wilmington Dry Goods or from the Sears, Roebuck catalog.  Ah!  such freedom!

Today, I attribute my desire for many outfits to this lack of choice in my younger years.