GENERAL MEETING: "Cotton & Thrift: Feed Sacks and the Cotton of American Households" with Dr. Marian Ann Montgomery (IN-PERSON)

Dr. Marian Ann Montgomery

Beginning in the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, mass-produced printed cotton sacks were relied upon by rural America as a valuable source of free fabric for clothing, quilts, and home décor. 

In 2015, more than 5600 printed cotton sack pieces came into the holdings of the Museum of Texas Tech University in the Pat L. Nickols Cotton Sack Research Collection. The Nickols Collection includes white sacks, printed partial and whole cotton sacks, swatches of printed sacks, instructional booklets, garments, quilts, quilt tops, and decorated white sacks. Combined with earlier and subsequent individual donations, the almost 6000 feed sack pieces held by the Museum of TTU make this the largest collection of feed sack materials to be assembled by an American museum.

Learn more about this unique and important collection in a presentation that will be interesting to any lover of vintage fabrics.

More About Dr. Montgomery

Dr. Montgomery is Curator of Clothing and Textiles at the Museum of Texas Tech University. She is a quilt historian and has published through the American Quilt Study Group. Dr. Montgomery earned her Ph.D. in fashion and textile history/museum administration from New York University through studies in the Costume Institute and Textile Study Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2018 she received the Bybee Scholar award for her work in promoting and preserving the art of quilting. Dr. Montgomery resides in Lubbock with her husband and dog, and she quilts in her spare time.