The realities of frontier life necessitated practical choices and garments that could serve multiple purposes. This 19th-century garment is known as a wrapper. It features a loose-fitting front that could be worn without a corset, at a time when women wore corsets for nearly every occasion. Wrappers were worn as casual home-wear. They were popular as dressing gowns, as maternity wear, and for nursing mothers. Unlike on most dresses of the day, the front is easy to open, which could accommodate breastfeeding. Patterned cottons like this one, sometimes called calicos, were popular goods sold by Seattle founder Arthur A. Denny’s local store. They were colorful, could mask stains, and were easy to wash. In his 1857 account of life in the Washington territories, James Swan mentions that blue-and-white patterns were widely popular in Seattle, a favorite of both the Indigenous population and white settlers.