We talked textiles, tough times, and turning sacks into dresses on Sketch and Coffee Live at 5:30am Texas time

Back in the Depression, when money was tighter than a rusted jar lid, flour sacks weren’t just for biscuits, they were for dresses. With rail shipping replacing wagons and barrels, paper and cloth sacks became the new standard for flour mills. Folks would boil and scrub off the printed labels with lye soap just to reuse the fabric. Eventually, the mills caught on and started using water-soluble inks, making the sacks easier to clean and more useful. Some even printed colorful patterns right on the cloth. As flour sack reuse became common, the mills got competitive. They printed floral fabrics bright enough to rival anything in a department store and even partnered with dress pattern companies to showcase their sack prints right on the packaging. Some mills printed entire sewing patterns directly on the sacks themselves, just cut and stitch. And yes, legend has it Marilyn Monroe was once photographed in a potato sack dress to prove she could make anything look good. Turns out, folks had been doing that long before Hollywood caught on.

On today’s livestream, I pulled a classic flour sack from the Random Object Randomogrifier and gave it a 30-minute sketch. We talked about how necessity turned packaging into fabric, how branding shifted to match fashion, and what it means to turn scraps into stories.

Watch the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/rsdxXoN_X8o?si=ZQ80aFktXhHpq2g9