Originally Posted by
ThayerRags
I just recently learned that we have a Works Progress Administration (WPA) building down the street a block or two from my house that included a women’s sewing room. It’s our Municipal Swimming Pool building, and was built by the WPA in 1935. A small second level over the main building housed the sewing room, that included treadle machines and cutting tables. The building is still in use, although not for sewing.
Sewing rooms were part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to put unemployed people back to work following the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. While the men were put to work building roads, bridges, and a host of municipal building projects, sewing rooms, libraries, and gardening & canning facilities were also built by the WPA to provide jobs for women nation-wide. Clothing, household goods (including quilts), and mattresses were among the items made in the sewing rooms, and some rooms included mending and clothing repair. Wages were very low, but it was a wage. From what I have learned, by 1936 there were about a half million women working these WPA jobs, which also included school lunch programs and housekeeping duties to assist relief families suffering from illness. By 1943, most of these work projects were discontinued as the nation went to war.
The vast history of sewing in my little community is interesting to me, and I’ve only begun to learn about it. I have found a couple of threads here at QB that gives mention to WPA Sewing Rooms or machines, and wondered who else could comment on this sewing history.
CD in Oklahoma
My Mom talked about this - she was born in 1926 and remembers the Depression well. I own a small t-shirt business and buy copyrighted/licensed patterns on t-shirts and sweatshirts that my husband and I sell at fall craft sales. One of our first sales was in the hall of the church where I grew up and where my parents had been married. I had one sweat shirt that Mom immediately picked it up and said "this is the Dresden plate pattern, it is the very first quilt pattern I learned to make during the Depression." And she went on to tell about the WPA programs and how that was where she learned to quilt as a child. Her mother had a new baby and a toddler so only had the time to show her the very basic sewing to make repairs and new blankets, nothing so fancy as quilting. About twenty minutes after Mom had walked away from our shirt booth, her sister walked up, picked up the same shirt and told the very same story about the Dresden plate pattern. Now when I see people admiring that pattern on one of my shirts, I tell them the story about WPA and how Mom and her younger sister both learned that Dresden plate as their very first quilt pattern and have kept on to quilting for almost 80 years. Sometimes they've never heard of the women's side of the WPA, and sometimes they have stories about their own family members and how they learned different things through the WPA. Sometimes we need to spend more time paying attention to our history than worrying about what the Kardashians are doing. Thanks for the great story today - I'll be doing more reading up on this because I'm even more curious now.