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Dyeing Department

Three employees, a man in a white shirt and tie, a man in work clothes and a woman wearing an apron, pose in front of a long table in a factory.

Credit: Cowansville Historical Society

Break time in the Dye House in 1945. A stencil printed fabric is shown, which is one of the company’s star products. In the stencil process, the fabric is laid out on 70-yard-long tables and is hand printed with openwork patterns. A stencil made of highly porous fabric is laid on a wooden frame, onto which a special paint is poured and forced through the negative spaces of the pattern. The stencil is then lifted and the same process is repeated until the desired number of patterns has been completed.