This should have been a blog bank holiday special, but I’m a bit behind schedule. Here is the whole booklet from Stitchcraft “For the Junior Miss”, which is from 1949 according to The British Library. The bust sizes are all 32-34 inch, plus there are socks, hat and mittens. I’ve added a gallery of knits in the booklet before you scroll down to see the scanned pages.
EDIT – See the whole pattern here.
I had a lovely holiday a couple of weeks ago. Undaunted by rain, wind and sleet, Mr Sunnystitcher and I visited the Cotswolds, stayed in a lovely old cottage with an open fire and hired a car to visit lots of National Trust houses, castles and scenic villages. I managed to squeeze in two charity and antique shop rummages in Woodstock and Moreton-In-Marsh. No sewing patterns were unearthed, but a pile of knitting patterns and three issues of The Lady from the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Here is the first, from The Lady no. 2384 from October 1930. I adore this pattern! Sorry for the wonky scan. And I am absolutey gutted that they have only published part 2 of the pattern in this issue, covering the back and sleeves. I’m planning to visit the British Library to scan the first part, but while you wait here is a picture of what you could be knitting. I’ll update this page when I get part 1.
Elegantly depressed 60s ladies prefer Jaeger Tropic-Spun wool. I imagine they are listening to Leonard Cohen and really feeling his lyrics in their souls. Fantastically serious 60s lady jumpers are for a range of bust sizes from 34 to 40.
Thank heavens for the British Library and even bigger thans to the Rare Book team. I was tearing my hair out searching the huge catalogue for this issue one issue of The Lady, to complete the pattern I’d already posted the second half of (to make things easier I’ve reposted the picture bellow todays so the pattern reads in the right order).
Eventually I emailed the researcher team and instead of hitting the button for Newspapers, hit Rare Books and Manuscripts -oops! They responded the next day with the answer – it was listed as Lady instead of The Lady! So instead of heading to my usual reading room (either Humanities as they cover fashion or Newspapers as they cover magazines) today I entered the hallowed reading hall of rare manuscripts and books. Slightly disappointed by my fellow reaaders, who though quieter than the Humanities people, so many weren’t even looking at books, they were just using laptops. There were no wizards consulting medieval manuscripts. But excitingly the copying room as a bigger, more excellent scanner, and no queue. So here we have part one of this amazing sweater from 1930.
The page was quite big, so you may have to save and zoom to see this in a readable way. It’s quite a high res scan, so should be no problem unless you are using a phone (your interent surfing software might down res it into a blur).
Measures 38 inches around chest once finished, so for size 34-36-38 depending on how close fitted you’d like it. I’d say the model is 34 inch bust. 3ply.
Slightly off topic – but this makes sense if anyone has seen my last post in which a missing part of a knitting pattern from a vintage copy of the Lady was tracked down and scanned at the British Library.
Did you know you can contact the British Library, become an official “reader” and place an order to view any knitting magazine? They pretty much have all of them, which is so exciting to me. Or even every issue of Vogue or Weldon’s Ladies Journal. I need more vintage magazine titles so I can look them up (ok I’ve got a page full already). I’m wondering if they have all the free sewing patterns that were given away with magazines and all the supplements like the Vogue Pattern Book or Weldon’s themed catalogues like this fancy-dress issue. Being a reader is like a library member, but you can’t take anything home and have to have a small interview in the Reader Registration in which you explain why you need a card. I said I was blogging about knitting patterns from the twentieth century and surprisingly they said OK, you can come in! The nice lady even said “You are going to have so much fun”. There are rules like no pens, scissors or glue allowed, personal objects must be taken into the special reading room in a clear plastic bag and security guards check you for books on the way out of the room too.
Every book with an ISBN number has to have a copy at the British Library, so they also have any pattern book too. You can search through their catalogue here . Alas many knitting patterns were just leaflets from yarn shops and department stores, so they don’t have everything, but probably enough to keep me visiting and scanning for the next 50 years. Anyone got any request for specific patterns, magazines or time periods?
People who visit museums and art galleries might never think to visit a library, but at the British Library they put on great exhibitions. My favourite exhibition was Out Of This World, which told the history of sci-fi, from utopian ideas in Ancient Greece and Gulliver’s Travels, via gothic horror to today’s fiction. They displayed lots of books, as you’d expect, but some of them were amazing, like the tiny handwritten stories by the Bronte sisters when they were children and original manuscripts. Other exhibitions have been on Gothic art, architecture and literature, The Georgian period of english history, Underground comics and currently story of the Magna Carta.
They also have a permanent exhibition space for sharing the Treasures of the British Library, which includes a handwritten Alice in Wonderland given to the inspiration for Alice and an original Gutenberg Bible.
It’s worth going in just to try the food and look at the amazing stacks of books behind glass in the main atrium. I just checked the website and apparently there are four places to eat, so I’ll have to investigate the other three. The first time I went, I presumed some librarian would be at the door checking that you had a good reason for going in the building and security guards. In fact they have restricted access reading rooms, so you can’t wander around the shelves, but you can wander around the public areas and there is even a gift shop.At the moment there are loads of students studying and using the superfast internet (so many there was even an article in the Times newspaper about academics finding no seats due to GCSE and A-level students flooding in).
Any vintage fans might appreciate a little vintage reading. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading some of the books printed by the British Library which I got at the gift shop. These vintage books originally printed between 1920 and 1960 are a great way to pick up on what life was like for every day people and learn more random things, such as there being a special ladies waiting room at railway stations or people’s attitudes towards new fashions. In one book, Murder Underground, there is a passage in which a younger women in 1930s explains to her mother/landlady (I forget which) that wearing lipstick is actually quite respectable nowadays and doesn’t mean the woman in question is “fast.” Unfortunately that particular author, Mavis Doriel Hay, only wrote three books but there is a whole series of crime classic reprints from other authors , plus her three. You can get them at the gift shop at the Library or online from their shop or from Amazon (even Amazon in US I believe). I managed to miss the detective fiction exhibition a few years ago – bugger! – but at least it prompted enough interest that more titles have been reprinted every year. Here are my top three:
Bobble Stitch is something I’ve never tried, but for this pattern I am very tempted. It’s treasure I scanned at the British Library today, having looked through the Library Catalogue at home and found an item called Stitchcraft Leaflets. I was expecting something like the For The Junior Miss booklet. Instead I found individual patterns numbered 1 to 233. The first 1 to 120 are beautifully bound into a hardback book, which makes them tricky to scan. The rest were in six large manila envelopes. They were bought by The British Museum (forerunner to The British Library) between 1937 and 1939. Quite a lot of them were for cushions, or children’s things. I’ve picked my favourites to bring to the blog over the next two weeks. I recognised a couple from Stitchcraft magazine issues, so I think these are recycled.
It’s a marvellously realistic modern size 34-36 inch bust and is 4 ply. Let me know if it’s unreadable – I had to scan it as a pdf at the library and at home did a printscreen and edit in Paint to make it into a jpeg (my wonderful Mr SunnyStitcher is in New Zealand and is usually in charge of converting things at work, where he has all the software).
Remember how I am a bit obsessed with Miss Lemon’s jumper? See my previous post. Finally I think I’ve found a fairly similar knitting pattern, then I found a second one. Here is the first, from Stitchcraft Leaflet No. 10 from 1937. Apologies for the wiggley scanning. It was bound into a hardback book by British Library curators and was difficult to scan, hence my hand in the scanner (spot the finger in the picture). Jumper number two will follow tomorrow! Finished measurements 34-35 inches.
Following on from yesterday’s Miss Lemon jumper, here is another. It has a slightly different neck embellishment, in a scarf style rather than a bow (I think I prefer the bow. but I imagine a mash up of the two patterns would be perfect.) I’m not impressed that a 34-36 bust is described as slightly over average, but then I imagine I’m less malnurished than I would have been if I was a shorter, svelte 1930s lady.
The classic idea of 50s fashion is the New Look. I’ve read a lot of fashion history books lately (and will do a post on the best ones soon) but here is a little of what has been on my mind. Did you know Christian Dior, credited with the New Look which changed women’s fashion was sponsored by a cotton magnate?
He was the lead designer at Lucien Lelong from 1941 to 1946. The Spring 1945 collections couldn’t be sold abroad under the Utility standards in Britain and American Limitation orders which limited how much fabric could be used in clothes. Dior met with cotton magnate and owner of Galston, Marcel Boussac in 1945. He was offered Galston, but wanted his own atelier and explained that he wanted to make clothes he remembered from his youth, when his mother wore long skirts and petticoats. Boussac must have seen the francs piling up – longer, fuller skirts used more fabric and therefore made more profits for him. A Dior full skirt contained 18 metres (20 yards) of pleated and gathered material. Dior agreed to complete the 1946 collections at Lelong before going his own way, launching the collection dubbed The New Look by the press in 1947.
In reality, Dior’s silhouette was far from new. The style was heavily influenced by fashions of the mid-1910s and before. The basic elements of a tiny waist, soft shoulders, full long skirts and prominent bosom had been introduced, mostly for evening dresses, just before the start of hostilities in 1939. In 1943 and 1944, Parisian couturier had tried making fuller skirts and tighter waists, to the extent that their fabric allowances would allow…
This is illustrated with a suit by Balenciaga from 1939 on the right and a Christian Dior from 1947.
I’m with Coco Chanel when it comes to wearable fashion. To achieve the Dior silhouette corsets were reintroduced. Chanel’s pre and post WW1 years were devoted to fashions which allowed comfort and movement. From “Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life” by Justine Picardie:
I make fashions women can live in, breathe in, feel comfortable in and look young in.”
– Coco Chanel in 1930’s said to Vogue Editor Bettina Ballard
Chanel was apparently infuriated by Dior’s success in reintroducing the constrictive corsets that she had swept away.
The second book “Coco Chanel – The Legend and the Life” ( click the picture to see it on Amazon) doesn’t lack and details when it comes to any man Chanel had an affair with, but fails to give enough details of her early years in fashion. It rushes along from 1910 when she opens a milliners, then she’s selling clothes which are boyish and made from jersey, then in 1913 opens a shop in Deauville, then it’s 1915 in Biarritz. The clothes are descibed as sleek and simple, designed to be worn without corsets, with simple jersey jackets, straight skirts and unadorned sailor blouses. This is all the information from these years and I really wanted more illustrations and facts about the clothes, after all this is when a real revolution in what women wore happened. Much more space is given to her personal life. On the whole it’s a good book, but not a book about fashion.
I’m such a big fan that I’ve visited her summer house Greenway twice (and photographed her book collection in minute detail, if anyone wants to see those). Next time I go, I’m planning to stay actually in the house as there is National Trust holiday flat.
Anyway, today’s excitement – There is going to be a photographic exhibition at the Bankside Gallery London from 6th September Agatha Christie – Unfinished Portrait running from August to September 2015. I’ll defiently be brushing up my cloche hat to wear to this one.
The blog is still in a 30’s groove, as I share the treasures from my last scanning trip to the British Library. Before I share, can I ask if any readers have any pattern requests? Seen a magazine or pattern on Etsy or Ebay and missed out, I can easily go and scan it if it was published in the UK. Even in Australia and New Zealand, a lot of companies like Weldon’s produced very similar magazines. Please leave a comment on this post.
From The British Museum, precursor of the British Library, date stamped 23rd March 1939. I think this is a very wearable autumn style to get on our needles now, to be finished by September. For a 33-35 inch bust, made from 3ply (see my recommendation for modern 3ply yarn). The unusual stitch gives it a smocking affect.
The pages can be found as PDFs from these links – Stitchcraft 147 (1) and Stitchcraft 147 (2) *
* I apologise for the scanning resolution – the scans were made in the Newspaper room, rather than Rare books. That particular scanner saves as a pdf so to make these pictures I had to do a screen print. The PDFs are a much higher res.
Such a lovely star shaped collar and kind of a wiggly waveform stitch, makes this one a twice as interesting pattern. Bust 33-35 inch bust in 3 ply (incidentally, which is the correct way to write it, 3ply or 3 ply or maybe 3-ply?)
Here are the pages as pdfs, at a higher, more readable resolution. Stitchcraft 133 (1) Stitchcraft 133 (2) Stitchcraft 133 (3)
This is a late thirties cardigan for a medium sized figure. Bust 35 – 37 inches. It was date stamped into the British Museum on 20th March 1939. Here are the pages as three pdfs – Stitchcraft 139 (1) Stitchcraft 139 (2) Stitchcraft 139 (3)
I won’t be making this one, as I absolutely hate moss stitch – takes twice as many hand movements and for some reason that really winds me up. Have a look at the back page for the “other attractive designs in this series.”
OMG Isn’t this fabulous! and it’s knitted sideways with multi-coloured stripes. It’s also wearable in Spring and Summer as it has short sleeves (and here in the UK it’s going to be the hottest I’ve ever known it tomorrow at 33 degrees C, so obviously thick winter sweaters aren’t on my mind at the moment). It is green, fawn, rust, yellow and brown and is for a 33-35 inch bust. How much do you wish this was a colour picture? I’ve spotted that a couple of the other Stitchcraft Leaflets I have scanned were originally featured in the monthly Stitchcraft Magazine, so I may yet find (and share here) a colour photo.
Here are the pdfs (which are clearer and zoomable compared to the pictures) Page 1 and Page 2 and 3
Firstly hello to all the lovely people who have been looking at my site. I’m always amazed by the amount and surprised by the global reach, so a sunny hello and welcome to knitters, dressmakers and vintage fans from Japan, Slovenia, Belgium, China, Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Romania, Slovakia, and the top ten countries of Great Britain, North America, Australia, Canada, Russia, Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, and everywhere else.
Now this promises it is suitable for beginners, but as I haven’t tried it I can’t promise this. I can promise that it will be incredibly chic. The bust size is 32- 34 inches and it’s an incredibly short pattern, so shouldn’t take long to make. The spots are embroidered on afterwards. It is Stitchcraft Leaflet 162, from 1939. Isn’t her hair-do fabulous!
Here are the pdfs – Spots are chic and Spots are Chic page 2 and 3
[Like the last few things I’ve added to the site, this was scanned into a pdf format and so the pictures below are screenshots and pdfs have a much higher resolution. I think I have proven myself to be old now, by not being interested in learning a new thing about computer technology because it will be too hard (ie. how to properly turn a pdf into a jpg) and instead thinking of the quickest way around.]
This “shirt jumper” is from earlier in the 1930’s and was bound into a book at the British Museum. Unfortunately this gives a bit of a wobble to the page when scanning. Did you know that the scanners I use at the British Library upsidedown compared to a photo-copier? You lay the book on the scanner bed looking up at you, rather than face down and in this case it wouldn’t lie flat.
I think this offset sort of rib pattern is a winner and I’m a big fan of collars like this. I would add it to my to knit list, but it is already overflowing with plans (I’m in the middle of three seperate knitting projects and two sewing ones just now). The Bust is 34-36 inches and the yarn was blue (and it’s far too hot today to add any quips, I’m just melting!.
Here are the PDFs – Shirt Jumper Knitting Pattern Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
It’s nearly the end of my series of thirties knits scanned at the British Library, but don’t fret vintage pattern addicts – I have a hoard of 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s patterns to scan from my own collection. For those in London, I’m also planning to sell some of my vintage patterns and magazines, sewing patterns and fabric at the Hackney Jumble Trail (weather permitting, if it rains people might have to come up to my flat).
Today’s pattern is from the end of the Sitchcraft Leaflet Series and has lovely embroidered zigzags. The bust size is a tiny 30 -32 inch and can be made with long or short sleeves. As a larger bust size than this, I’m thinking of adding that kind of embroidered design to a different pattern of a more generous size – perhaps something that I don’t wear very often having become bored with it.
Unfortunately the date stamp was too faint to read, but I’m fairly sure that part of the collection was from the late thirties. Here are the pdf versions of the three pages – page 1, page 2 and 3, Page 4
Here is leaflet 228 from Stitchcraft, last of the scans I made on my last trip to the British Library. My plan is to go back and scan from different sources, Good Needlework for example and look at both 20s and 40s, but as the library had all 228 of the leaflets, I’m sure I will revisit this collection.
It is a much more modern friendly bust size of 34-36 (unlike the 30-32 inch post yesterday).At first it looks marvelous, then I notice the entire thing is knitted in ribbing, which will make it very clingy and rather fiddly to knit up, as you will be changing from knit to purl constantly.
Doesn’t this model look bored, like she’s thinking she can’t take anymore of the photographer talking about his holidays, though as it’s from September 1939, perhaps she’s tired from worrying about the war which had just begun.
Here are the pdfs for this pattern – Page 1, Page 2 and 3, Page 4
As promised, I’m departing from the thirties, looking back into my own collection of knitting ephemera and on to the fifties. Here is an issue of Stitchcraft which has appeared in my collection, possibly from eBay, but I really can’t remember – these things just appear in my house. Either they are breeding or I’m sleep shopping.
Inside there are four knitted ladies summer tops – starting from top left picture on page 14 v-neck with tiny stripes has 33 – 34 inch bust ; the 2-ply twin set (also shown on cover) has a bust of 33-34 or 35-36 inches; V-Neck blouse with big stripes (refered to as green v-neck blouse) fits a 35-36 inch bust; Sleeveless Jumper sweater has a bust of 33-34 inch bust. They are also shown in colour on the inside back cover. Page 12 has several ways to wear a scarf in summer.
Also includes some hair-pin crochet for a stole and circular shawl on page 4, 5 and 20; Girl’s sun suit and jacket for age 7 (22-24 inch waist); boys trunks for age 6 to 7; men’s sweater in thick wool with chunky cables picture on page 7 and pattern on page 22 in two sizes 36-38 inch chest and 39-41; crochet ladies gloves; some ladies caps in Angora; and a bag for to take to the beach.
