2nd Saturdays @ The Museum

PLEASE NOTE: Eventbrite limits ticket quantities for this event, but there is no limit on how many guests may attend the museum on any given Second Saturday. Everyone is welcome!

Admission to Irving Archives & Museum is FREE every second Saturday through December 2024!

Come see our special exhibitions, learn all about Irving's history, take a simulated ride over DFW Airport in a full-size cockpit, and think like an inventor in our Smithsonian Spark!Lab! We've got fun things for the whole family to enjoy, so come on out!

Plan your visit: IrvingArchivesAndMuseum.com

Second Saturdays are made possible thanks to generous support from the Friends of the Irving Museums. Join the Friends and help support Irving's museums: IrvingArchivesAndMuseum.com/Museum-Friends.

On view through August 16, 2024: "Thrift Style"

Thrift Style

Thrift Style explores the reuse of feed sacks to make clothing and other household objects and illuminates how the “upcycling” of these bags mutually benefitted twentieth-century consumers and businesses. With forty-one works from patterns to garments, it serves as an example of past ingenuity that can inform today’s efforts towards sustainability.Thrift Style is on view at Irving Archives and Museum May 15 through August 16, 2024.

The exhibition, organized by the Historic Costume and Textile Museum and the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, both at Kansas State University, provides a nostalgic view into American ingenuity, sensibility, and optimism during a particularly challenging time of economic hardship and war—the period of the Great Depression and World War II. The reuse of feed, flour, and sugar sacks was a cost-saving and resource-saving approach employed by homemakers to make new items to meet their families’ needs.

Seviella Smith Frischer (1893-1969), Four Patch Quilt, c. 1930; feed sack cotton, 80 x 75 inches; Courtesy of Kansas State University Historic Costume and Textile Museum.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, manufacturers began producing patterned and colored feed sacks to give home seamstresses more options. During World War II, the federal government limited fabric use for individual garments and homemakers were obligated to use thrifty approaches to repurpose what was available to them. As fabrics from feed sacks were not considered a limited resource, women turned to them as an accessible and patriotic option during the war effort. In response, trade organizations and manufacturers promoted the thrifty use of feed sack fabric by publishing how-to brochures and booklets with clothing designs, mending instructions, and other suggestions for restyling clothes.

The artifacts in the exhibition demonstrate a mutual goal of sustainability, with local businesses—mills and feed and seed operations—tailoring product design and marketing campaigns to attract customers; and consumers using their imaginations and practical skills to tailor clothing, aprons, quilts, dolls, and more out of the industry’s byproduct: feed sack cotton.

Unidentified maker, Child's Dress, c. 1935; feed sack cotton, 36 x 33 inches; Courtesy of Kansas State University Historic Costume and Textile Museum.

This exhibition offers a snapshot of domestic life during this time, when recycling was as critical as it is today, and it provides one of the best examples of upcycling in our nation’s history. It is organized by The Historic Costume and Textile Museum and the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, both at Kansas State University, and ExhibitsUSA, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance.

June 8 Second Saturday: Design your own costume!

This activity will use materials provided in our Smithsonian Spark!Lab. Use your imagination to create fashionable looks in celebration of our current exhibition Thrift Style.

This activity is on loan from the Smithsonian for a limited time only and not available for take-home use.

Join us for Second Saturdays!