How to Cheat in Knitting Fair Isle

A recent post on Ysolda Teague's blog pointed to several British Pathe archive clips on YouTube.  One of the clips, from 1931, says on the title slide that it  "presents winning specimens from the 20,000 competing articles in the recent 'Daily Sketch' Needlework Competition."   (You can view the clip here - there is no soundtrack.)  

There are close-ups of three pieces of traditional Fair Isle, and then six or seven jumpers.  One of them looks at first glance like another example of Fair Isle knitting, but the close-up shows that the pattern is actually embroidered afterwards, not knitted in.   

And I recognised the design!  (Yes, I should get out more.)  It's from a Paton's & Baldwin's 'Helps to Knitters' leaflet from the 1920s. 

Patons & Baldwins Helps to Knitters 147

 There is a very battered copy of the leaflet in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.  When I first saw it, I assumed that it was done using stranded knitting, in the traditional Fair Isle way - Fair Isles were very popular in the 1920s.  But in fact you knit a plain sweater and then follow the colour chart in the leaflet to add the patterned bands in cross stitch afterwards.   The leaflet specifies embroidery wool for the cross stitch, but from the film, it looks as though the knitter has used something with a sheen to it.   

  
Evidently the 'Daily Sketch' competition was looking for excellence in execution, not necessarily original designs.  And so it might be possible to identify some of the other winning designs too - there's a particularly elegant jumper below that looks very striking even in low-resolution black-and-white.