Wonder Socks

Wonder Series leaflet No. 1

There are three knitting pattern leaflets in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection for 'Wonder-Socks', with the slogan 'No Darning' on the front.  They don't need darning because either the toe and heel, or else the entire sole of the sock from toe to heel, are made separately from the rest of the sock and are easily replaceable. 

The leaflet shown above for 'Wonder-Socks' gives a patent number for the design.  I do like a hand knitting or crochet patent, and have collected quite a few.  They mostly relate to tools and gadgets - knitting needles, crochet hooks, needle gauges, row counters, and so on.  Patents for knitting patterns are very unusual.  The 'Wonder-Sock' patent was granted in 1937.  The proposed improved sock 'comprises at least two separate portions detachably secured together wherein the separate portions are provided along their edges with holes, perforations or loops whereby the separate portions may be readily secured together without the edges of the different portions overlapping.'  The patent application explains how to knit little holes along the edges of each piece of the sock (by a series of yarn overs and knit-two-togethers), so that the pieces can be joined by lacing a thread though the holes. 

Diagram from Patent 475912

According to the pattern leaflet: 'The Wonder-Sock is ever new and needs NO DARNING. A very valuable asset at the present time, with its perfectly fitting heels and toes, which only require a few stitches passed through the perforated selvages. No ugly darns: only a charming clock design where the new part is put in.' The 'present time' was 1940 - the leaflet goes on to say that the suppliers of the leaflet would knit men's socks for you, and that 'early bookings are wise to secure 1941's supply'.  (It doesn't say how many spare parts you got for each pair of socks, which I would have thought would be crucial information.) 

These days, when most machine knitted socks are hard wearing and relatively cheap, and knitting wool for socks usually has about 25% nylon for durability, darning socks is not the chore that it was in the 1940s.  Back then, before the days of nylon and other synthetic yarns, wool socks could wear into holes quite quickly, and many people could not afford to replace socks as soon as they developed a hole - especially in the 1940s when clothes were rationed, so that even if you had the money, you couldn't afford the coupons.  Darning and mending was a constant task for many women. 

Some years ago, someone knitted a sample Wonder-Sock from the pattern shown above, to see how well it works. 

Some people who have seen the sample thought that the joins between the pieces could be uncomfortable in wear (though no-one has actually tried wearing the sock to see, as far as I know).  The patent says  'the two portions [e.g. the heel and main part of the sock] may be readily secured together without the adjoining edges of the different portions overlapping' - but implies that you should take care that they don't overlap.  I think that it would be important not to make the stitching too tight - this has happened in one place on the sample sock and there is a slight ridge at that point, but elsewhere, with looser stitching, the seam feels perfectly flat. 

There are two versions of the Wonder-Sock, one with a separate heel and toe, as in the sample sock, and the other with the entire toe, heel and sole part replaceable, as illustrated in the patent.  The Wonder-Sock leaflet shown above illustrates both versions, but only gives instructions for the first version, though the leaflet does casually suggest that an experienced knitter could easily knit the other version without additional instructions.  But perhaps customers complained that they needed a proper pattern, because a leaflet for a 'Victory' sock, with the instructions for a replaceable sole, was produced. 

Wonder Series leaflet No. 3

Replacing parts of socks rather than darning them was not a new idea, as the Wonder-Sock patent acknowledges. Socks were invariably knitted top-down, so toes could be replaced by unravelling them, picking up the stitches and reknitting them with new wool.  Replacing the heels was less straightforward, but as early as 1886, Weldon's Practical Needlework, in its first Stocking Knitter issue had some (very brief) instructions for re-heeling socks.  As far as I can understand the instructions, you cut out or unpick the worn part of the heel, pick up stitches along the upper edge of the resulting gap, reknit the heel as far as you need to fill the gap, cast off, and sew the new heel in.  It seems that you then end up with a seam along three sides of the new heel, including one along the cast-off edge which would be under your foot.  The Wonder-Sock patent comments: 'this repairing operation has either been difficult and tedious to accomplish or has necessitated the formation of a ridge at the join which has given discomfort to the wearer' (or quite possibly both at once, I should think).   

As well as the Wonder-Sock patterns, there is a glove pattern in the same series. 

Wonder Series leaflet No. 4: Sun Ray Gloves

The fronts and backs of the gloves are knitted separately and then sewn together, so it would be possible to replace either half if they were worn out. They are knitted sideways: you knit the fingers one at a time (or rather half a finger at a time), along with the corresponding part of the palm, and then cast off the finger stitches and cast on stitches again for the next finger.  An ingenious idea.  

I have found out some details about the person who invented the Wonder-Sock. The 1937 patent was granted to Ida Janet Dufour-Cole, with an address in Cambridge. Ida Cole was born in 1880 in Burwell, Cambridgeshire, the youngest of five children of a jeweller and his wife.  Her father died when she was very young, but in 1891, the five children and their mother were all living together in Cambridge, and the three sons were working, and presumably supporting the family. In the 1901 census, Ida was a lodger in Eastbourne and was employed as a Costumier - I assume in Eastbourne, though it's impossible to tell from the census. 

In 1910, Ida married Samuel L Dufour in the Paddington district of London. Samuel Dufour is something of a mystery man - I can find no sign of him in any of the records in FindMyPast, except for his marriage to Ida Cole. In the 1911 census, Ida J. Cole was the head of a household in Edgware Road (London). She is listed as married, but there is no sign of her husband. She was a dressmaker, working from home, and there were two other women in the household, both her employees: one was an assistant dressmaker and the other the housekeeper. So apart from the absence of the husband, Ida Cole seems settled and successful by this time, aged 31.  

I can't find any trace of Ida Cole, or Ida Dufour-Cole, in 1921, or in the 1939 Register either.  In 1937, when the patent was granted, she was presumably living at the address in Cambridge given on the patent, and she was the manageress of a clothes shop in Cambridge (she appeared as a witness in the prosecution of a shoplifter).  

In 1940, the Wonder Series pattern leaflets were being published under the name J. D.-Cole.  The address on the leaflets is The Spinning Wheel, 22 Gloucester Road, London, which appears to have been a shop selling toys and yarns, from a post-war ad. You could order Wonder-Socks to be knitted for you, via the Spinning Wheel. One of the leaflets (probably a slightly later edition) claims: 'These leaflets can be obtained from all the leading Wool Shops and Stationers', and as one of the functions of the leaflets was to advertise the knitting service, she may have had mail-order customers for socks all over the country - and must have had a team of knitters to make Wonder-Socks. She doesn't seem to have used the pattern leaflets as a vehicle for selling wool - the leaflets say that you can use any 'good standard wool'.    

The KCG collection also has a later pattern in the Wonder Series, for leather moccasins.  The pattern pieces are drawn on the other side of the sheet, to be traced onto something else, e.g. a sheet of newspaper. (The 'Save Coupons' message shows that this leaflet was printed while clothes rationing was in force (1941 to 1949) when everything including paper was in short supply. That's why you got the pattern on just one sheet of paper, and you would not use blank sheets of paper to trace the pattern pieces onto, when newspaper would work just as well.) 

The moccasin pattern lists the other leaflets in the Wonder Series then available.  There are seven knitting leaflets, including the three shown in this post, and eleven leather charts.  In addition, five children's leaflets are listed, four of them for soft toys, I imagine - Bambi, Thumper, Flower and Teddy Bear.  The first three are characters in the Disney film Bambi, which came out in 1942, giving an earliest date for the leaflet.  The fifth pattern is for a Pop-gun (no idea).  

I assume that Ida Cole used her dress-making experience in designing the moccasins and other leather items  - certainly the pair illustrated look very expertly made.  The leaflet doesn't offer to make the moccasins for you, unlike the socks, though I suspect that many customers would not have the leather-working skills to be able to produce such a good result. 

Ida Cole died in London in 1955, and was buried in Burwell, where she was born. I'd like to know more about her, because she seems to have been a successful woman, making her own way in the world, without apparently any support from her mysterious husband.  And inventing and making a living from an ingenious sock design is a commendable achievement, it seems to me. 

Members of the Knitting & Crochet Guild can have copies of the Wonder-Sock and Sun Ray Gloves pattern leaflets - email requests to collections@kcguild.org.uk.  

Wolsey Knitting Wools

 

Wolsey leaflet 943

I was aware of Wolsey as a long established brand name of ready-made knitwear and hosiery, and I can just about remember it as a brand of stockings in the 1960s.  But I had not heard of Wolsey as a brand of knitting wool until I found Wolsey knitting patterns in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection. 

The company seems to have kept that side of the business quite quiet - the only ads for the knitting wool I have seen were in the 1930s, while their ready-made clothing was widely advertised over a long period. Below is an ad from 1941, showing that they then made stockings, underwear and outerwear for women  - no mention of knitting wool. 

Wolsey ad in Vogue, October 1941

A bit of history: the company Wolsey Ltd. of Leicester was formed in 1920 as an amalgamation of several existing companies, covering the range of processes from spinners to manufacturers of ready-to-wear clothing.  The main company involved, R. Walker and Sons, had a history in Leicester going back to 1755, and it was claimed that the new company was one of the largest hosiery manufacturing firms in the world.  It made "all classes of knitted fabrics, including underwear, stockings, socks, gloves, sports coats and jerseys".  The company was apparently named for Cardinal Wolsey (who died in Leicester) - and presumably because it is an appropriately woolly name. And it still exists, though now only making menswear, and no longer in Leicester - their website is here.

The first Wolsey knitting pattern in the KCG collection is no. 23, published in 1932. (1932 was a good year for hand knitters - the first issues of Vogue Knitting Book and Stitchcraft magazine appeared then.).  The leaflet is not in the best condition, but the instructions are legible, and it is a pretty pattern. The bands knitted in the darker wool are in feather-and-fan stitch, while the lighter bands have just a single line of eyelets. "A chic jumper", as it says.  

Wolsey leaflet 23

Wolsey knitting wool was sold earlier than 1932 - I have not seen any ads for it from the company, but ads for yarn shops often listed the yarns that they sold, and I have seen a 1921 ad mentioning "Wolsey Art. Knitting Silk" (i.e. rayon, or art. silk). 

The KCG collection has only 10 Wolsey patterns with numbers less than 400 (though presumably there were 400 published) - this is typical of 1930s leaflets, I think because many of them went for salvage during World War 2. Here's one of the survivors. 

Wolsey leaflet 389

A nice cardigan to go for a walk in, as in the little drawing.  It's knitted mostly on size 8 (4mm.) needles, partly single rib and partly the openwork panels shown, on the fronts, back and sleeves.  The leaflet shows (top left) the Cardinal Wolsey trademark. 

Leaflet 433 is from the end of the 1930s, and has an intriguing stitch pattern on the front. (The back and sleeves are in a purl 4, knit 1 rib.)

Wolsey leaflet 433

There are also Wolsey patterns for men - mostly V neck sleeveless pullovers, which I haven't shown, because there were so many similar patterns published in the 1930s.  But after the start of the war in 1939, like many other knitting wool producers, Wolsey produced a leaflet of "Service Woollies" for men in the armed forces, including scarves and gloves as well as the balaclava on the cover. 

Wolsey leaflet 488

And because the Wolsey name was strongly associated with underwear (especially in wool), there were, of course, patterns for you to knit your own. 

Wolsey leaflet 509

During the war, leaflets were printed in a smaller format, to save paper.  Here's an example.  

Wolsey leaflet 633

The jumper has buttons at the back of the neck, so the collar is in two parts, and the cable on the front is repeated on the collar.  A nice design, I think. 

Dating the Wolsey leaflets is difficult, without ads to help, but I think that the leaflets numbered 900+ are from the late 1940s.  We have far more of them in the KCG collection - almost half of those numbered from 950 to 999 (compared with 10 numbered up to 400).  Most of these, like number 943 at the top of the post, are printed with a red background - presumably Cardinal red.  Some of them have very exaggerated shoulders - leaflet 959 has instructions for knitted shoulder pads, to support that very long shoulder seam. 

Wolsey leaflet 959

But the fashions were changing rapidly: leaflet 984 shows a more natural shoulder line.  It is trimmed with stranded colour work in five additional colours - colour work was very popular in the late 1940s.    

Wolsey leaflet 984

Some of the late 1940s Wolsey patterns were printed in colour, which shows off the stranded colour work in leaflet 987 very well. 

Wolsey leaflet 987

And then...  there were no more Wolsey patterns, apparently.  We have leaflets numbered up to 997 in the KCG collection.  Some of the leaflets advertise other Wolsey leaflets on the back, and leaflets numbered up to 998 are shown there.  It is as though the company realised they were about to run out of three-digit numbers for their leaflets and just decided to .... stop. 

If anyone knows any more about Wolsey knitting wools and leaflets produced in Leicester around 1950, please let me know in the comments. I know that there was a company Sunbeam Wolsey based in Millfield, County Cork, who were also using the Wolsey name and trademark.  It appears to be an entirely separate company, and operating in another country, but perhaps it had something to do with Wolsey on Leicester ceasing to publish knitting patterns. I'd love to know. 

Copies of any of the patterns shown in this post are available free to members of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.  Please email requests to collections@kcguild.org.uk. 

 

Two 1920 Knitting Patterns

Some time ago, the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection was given two knitting patterns - this is a long-overdue post about them. You might think that it is not worth writing about a donation of two pattern leaflets, when there are more than 50,000 in the collection. But these are special - not so much for their appeal to vintage knitters, but because they are rare survivors. 

One of the patterns is a Beehive recipe card.  

Beehive Recipe Card No. 11

The Beehive Recipe Cards are rare, but not unknown. We now have five of the cards in the KCG collection, and the British Library has a set of 86. (I wrote about the cards here in a previous post.) Like several of the designs on the cards, this one was designed by Marjory Tillotson, who had begun designing knitting and crochet patterns for J. & J. Baldwin & Partners in Halifax before WW1, and continued to work for the company until the early 1920s. The British Library copy of Card No. 11 has a date stamp of December 1921, but comparing it with the one illustrated above shows that it is a later reprint. Unlike the BL copy, ours does not mention that the company had become part of Patons & Baldwins Ltd., and so must date from before the merger in 1920 of the two companies. I am dating it to early 1920, though it could be 1919 - not earlier, I think, or it would have been too out of date to be reprinted in 1921.  

When knitted outerwear for women started to become common around 1910, it was usually in the form of a sports coat. The description of the Phyllida coat points to the raglan sleeves as being "very suitable for sports' wear" - a set-in sleeve might be tighter round the armholes and give less room for movement. I think though that in the 1910s and 1920s, sports coats for women were often worn as casual wear, without any connection to sports. 

The coat is mainly stocking stitch, with the shawl collar, belt and integral button band in garter stitch. There is an odd sentence in the description: "There is extra shaping at the lower edge of each front and back, to prevent the side seam from dropping." And indeed, the fronts and back have short row shaping at the lower edge to make the centre front and centre back longer than the sides. The shaping won't have any effect on the side seams, so I assume that the intention is that if the side seams drop, the shaping will compensate. But any reasonable method of stitching the side seams that I can think would prevent them from stretching, and it's the centre front and back that are more likely to stretch in wear (especially the back), so making them longer will not help at all.  If anyone has any idea why Marjory Tillotson might have added the shaping,  please let me know.

The other pattern given in the same donation is a Sirdar leaflet, for "A Tested and Reliable Jumper". From the style of the jumper it also dates from around 1920. The Sirdar brand still exists, as any UK knitter will know. It was originally the brand name of Harrap Brothers, a company going back to 1880, and the Sirdar name was in use by 1903 when Sirdar Rug Wool was advertised. But I have never seen or heard of any Sirdar leaflets published in the 1920s, so I believe this leaflet is extremely rare. 

Sirdar 'Lady's Knitted Jumper' leaflet

Sirdar wools, including the Sirdar Sports Wool in the leaflet, began to be advertised by 1914, mostly by yarn shops. In 1917 the company published the Sirdar Knitting & Crochet Book, subtitled "A Miscellaneous Collection of Useful Articles". (The KCG doesn't have a copy, but there is one in the British Library.)  The "useful articles" are mostly things like socks, scarves, gloves and mittens; because it was published during World War 1, many of them are intended for men in the armed forces. 

In the 1920s, patterns specifying Sirdar wool sometimes appeared in magazines - that was true for other manufacturers too. As far as I knew (before I saw this pattern leaflet), Sirdar did not publish any knitting patterns themselves in the 1920s. This changed around 1934, when Sirdar started to produce and advertise a numbered series of pattern leaflets. I think that the numbering probably started at 100 or 101 - leaflet 106 is in the Sirdar Heritage Collection. Was the Lady's Knitted Jumper pattern the only Sirdar pattern leaflet published before 1934? If so, why weren't there more? Patons & Baldwins were publishing pattern leaflets at an increasing rate throughout the 1920s, and the two separate companies had produced their first pattern leaflets before WW1. Presumably Sirdar saw no need to - or maybe this leaflet was testing the market, and convinced them that it wasn't worthwhile. It would be nice to know. 

But let's look at this jumper pattern in more detail. The jumper is knitted in one piece, starting at the bottom edge of the front and finishing at the bottom edge of the back, casting on extra stitches at either side for the sleeves, making the neck opening along the way, and casting off the sleeve stitches while working the back. The only seams are at the sides and under the arms. This was a typical construction for jumpers in the 1920s. The collar and cuffs are worked separately and sewn on. It is mostly worked in garter stitch, apart from the deep striped section at the bottom edge, the cuffs and the band around the waist (under the belt) which are all worked in double rib. The main practical problem, it seems to me, is knitting the stitches of both sleeves and the back of the jumper, all at the same time, on straight needles. (It's less of a problem on the front: the neck opening starts before the sleeve stitches are added, so from then on, the two halves of the front are worked separately.) The pattern sort of acknowledges the difficulty - under 'materials required' it lists 3 bone needles, and says, at the point where the two sides of the front are rejoined: "There should now be 248 stitches. (You will need the 3 needles, as there are too many stitches to knit easily on 2 needles.)" The bone needles would have to be double pointed, and you would need 124 on each of two needles and knit with the third. Double pointed bone needles in a 15 inch (38 cm.) length were available, but even so, this seems like a very awkward way to knit and an almost guaranteed way of losing stitches, unless you used some kind of stopper on the ends of the needles to stop the stitches falling off.  

I think that it was published at the same time as the early Beehive Recipe Cards (i.e. around 1920), because the jumper is very similar in style to some of the jumpers in the recipe cards, shown below. 

  

From Beehive Recipe Card No. 3

The Priscilla "jumper sweater" from Card No. 3, is also designed by Marjory Tillotson. Like the Sirdar jumper, it has a deep band of double rib around the waist to pull the garment in without any shaping. 

From Beehive Recipe Card No. 15

The "Suzanne" jumper, again designed by Marjory Tillotson, is described as "a very serviceable garment for school wear". The garter stitch collar and belt, with tassels, match the Sirdar jumper. 

I don't think anyone would want to wear either the Beehive sports coat or the Sirdar knitted jumper now - the shapes don't work well with current styles. Jumpers from the later 1920s, with loose boxy shapes and often with interesting stitch patterns, would be much more wearable. But the designs in the leaflets are nice examples from a time when knitted outerwear had only recently become a regular item of clothing for women. The 'sports coat' evolved into a cardigan, and women have been wearing cardigans and jumpers ever since.   

If anyone would like to see the card and the leaflet in full, copies are free to members of the Knitting & Crochet Guild - email requests to collections@kcguild.org.uk.