Most of the pioneers made their own clothing except such things as shoes, hats and boots that were bought in town. Many of the women would knit socks, mittens, caps, and sweaters that were worn by the family. The wives would do the sewing by hand unless she was one of the fortunate ones to have a sewing machine. Quilts and rugs for the floors were also made by hand.
Mrs. Johnson's father made wooden shoes for his children. The tops were used, discarded leather uppers from some old and worn shoes.
Mrs. Glenn Sutherland always made her girls a new dress for Christmas. She never had a pattern. The girls would pick the kind of dress they liked from the Sears Roebuck catalog. Then she would cut out the material and sew it up.
One of her girls, Mrs. H.O. Berg tells this story about one of her new dresses.
"I wanted a new dress for the Old Settlers' picnic, so I saved the eggs from our small flock of hens, to buy the material. We had no refrigeration, and by the time I took them into the store, half of them were spoiled. I took the eggs to the store and picked out the prettiest material I could find, and since my mother wasn't home to make it I took it to my aunt. She sewed it for me and I wore it to the picnic, but on the way home it rained cats and dogs, as the old expression goes. We were in an open touring car, and my father had a hard time to keep us out of the ditch. I was trying to keep my younger sister from getting wet by holding her in my lap and wrapping her in a robe we had in the car. I was sitting in a pool of water and was soaking wet by the time we got home, but the worst part of it was my beautiful new dress was ruined. You see in those days, all the girls wore big, black santeen bloomers for undergarments, and the black bloomers had faded all over my new dress! "
Mrs. Farquer tells this story:
"One of my dresses would make four of those worn by my granddaughters. When I was a little girl we wore hoopskirts but my mother was very strict and would never let my sister and I wear them very stiff. Other children would run wild grape vine through the tucks and make them so stiff they'd bounce if you touched them, but mother never let us wear them that way.
I remember my wedding bonnet - it was a beautiful thing. It was made of leghorn with rows and rows of pink quilled into the front, and a big bouquet of pink flowers on the right side. My hair was parted on one side and waved back from my forehead into one of the big nets we wore. At the time I was married we wore the huge leg‑of‑mutton sleeves that ended in a small tight cuff, tight bodices, and a full, flowing skirt that never contained less than four widths of material."
(Mrs. Farquer was married in 1859.)
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 56