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 I am dating it to early 1920, though it could be 1919 - not earlier, I think, or it would have been too out of date to be reprinted in 1921.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.   

   

Spattees and Silk Winders

I bought a copy of the magazine Needlework for All on eBay recently — I'll donate it to the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection after I've written this post.  It's the December 1926 issue (there is no date given in the magazine, but it's clearly a Christmas issue, from the content, and I worked out the year from the information in the British Library catalogue and the other issues that we have in the collection already). 

Needlework for All No. 202, December 1926.  

I bought this issue partly because the eBay listing showed that it includes a pattern for spattees — a garment I have covered in previous posts. 

Spattees in Needlework for All No. 202

There was a brief fashion for spattees (or spats) for women which were launched at an event in the summer of 1926, as I described here and here, so in December 1926 they were still very new and fashionable. The Editor of Needlework for All emphasised this in the introduction to the issue: 

"Needlework for All" is nothing if not up-to-date — a statement which we may safely say is borne out by our current number, with its practical designs for the new Spattees and the fashionable Beret."  

Here's the beret, crocheted, with a tassel:

Beret from Needlework for All no. 202

There was a unexpected bonus for me when the magazine arrived, in an ad for Stratnoid knitting pins, crochet hooks and other needlecraft tools, including Silk Winders. 

As soon as I read the description of Stratnoid Silk Winders, I realised that I have one: "Collapsible. 4½in. long, price 6½d.  Knitting Pin Gauge and Winder combined."  

Stratnoid Silk Winder

And here it is folded up:

Actually, I didn't know until I saw the ad that it was a silk winder.  I bought it as a knitting needle gauge, which it is as well — the holes in the arms measure knitting needles from sizes 5 to 12 (5½mm. to 2¾mm.)  Sheila Williams, in The History of Knitting Pin Gauges describes it as 'a strange propeller-shaped gauge which folds neatly'.  She dates it to 'late 1920s/30s' — I think that probably the 1926 ad in Needlework for All marks its introduction, so 'late 1920s' seems correct.  

Once I thought of it as a silk winder, it is clearly similar to silk winders that we have in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, like the three shown below.  One of them still has silk wound onto it — or rather 'art. silk'. i.e. rayon.  

These gadgets were designed to handle rayon, which was very popular for knitting and crochet in the 1920s.  Like other knitting yarns at the time, rayon was sold in hanks. It is a very slippery yarn, and would be unmanageable if you wound the hanks into a ball as you would with wool, so instead it was wound onto something like one of the winders shown here.   You could make your own winder from a piece of stiff card - we have one in the collection cut from a box which originally had something like perfumed soap in it.  It has survived because it still has the rayon wound onto it, otherwise it would have been thrown out long ago.  Winders that were not home-made were generally made of cheap materials: two of those in the photo above are of plywood, and the one with 6 arms is compressed cardboard.  Many of the winders in the KCG collection have the name of a shop printed on them.  The winder above still with rayon on it was from The Grand Pygmalion, Boar Lane, Leeds, a large department store.  The six-armed winder is printed with "Rowntrees of Scarborough - Artificial Silk Specialists".   I suspect that these cheaply-produced winders were given free with a purchase of rayon, though I have no concrete evident of that. The 'Felix Keeps on Knitting' winder is relatively common, and may have been a free gift with a magazine, or something of that sort.

Back to the Stratnoid collapsible winder.  It obviously seemed like an excellent idea to the manufacturers, and the reverse of the winder says that a provisional patent had been taken out, though I haven't been able to find it.   

It doesn't seem to have sold well, though — very few seem to have survived to now, and none of the other Stratnoid ads that I have seen mention it. It is not too surprising that it didn't catch on when you think that at the end of a knitting or crochet project, it is common to have some yarn left over.  Most knitters have a cache of part-used balls of yarn that we keep because we might find a use for it one day. If that happened with an art silk project, you would want to keep the remaining rayon on its winder (and that's why we have winders in the KCG collection that still have silk wound onto them).  That's OK if the winder was free or home-made, and you could easily get another winder for your next project — not so good if it cost you 6½d.  But I am very pleased to have found out more about my Stratnoid needle gauge, and that it was not primarily a gauge at all, but a silk winder. 

An (Almost) A to Z of Knitting Needle Brands

Back in 2014, the volunteers working on the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection had a week of concentrated work trying to sort out the hundreds (or thousands) of knitting needles that had been given to the collection but weren't at that point organised in any way.  We called it Hook and Needle Week, but in fact we didn't get beyond the straight, single-pointed needles until much later. The photo gives you an idea of the task we were faced with. 

During the week, one of the other volunteers decided to try to put together a set of needle brands for every letter from A to Z.  It wasn't quite possible, but almost.  This September, I gave a talk on the collection at the Guild Convention weekend, and showed an A to Z set of needles as part of the talk.  I have decided to similar needle alphabet here. 

A is for....  Actually, lots of needle brands, the most obvious being Aero - still the most common brand if you look at the knitting needles on sale in charity shops, although new Aero needles have not been on sale for many years. But here A is for a much rarer brand, Anlaby. 

Anlaby needles, size 4, 10 inch 

Although it is almost invisible, the needles have ANLABY REGD. 4  engraved or stamped into the plastic, and then filled with some sort of ink or paint that has almost worn off.  It is white on pink, anyway, so can't have been very obvious even when new.  Anlaby was a brand of knitting wool in the 1930s - I only know that because we have two Anlaby pattern leaflets (not in very good condition), one shown below.  

The company making Anlaby wools would not have made the needles themselves  - I imagine that they were commissioned from a knitting needle manufacturer, for sale in shops that sold the wool, as a way of promoting the brand. 

B is for Bonette - full marks for making the brand and size easily visible on the needle.   Bonette needles were advertised in 1957, though they may have been made much earlier.  They were made by a London company, and I think only made plastic needles - whereas the traditional needle manufacturers around Redditch were originally metal workers.  The name may have been intended to suggest that the needles were similar to bone (only better, presumably).  Bone was a common material for knitting needles and crochet hooks until the 1920s, when it was replaced by the early plastics. (See here for an account of how bone needles were made).  The cream colour of this pair may be intended to reinforce that, but Bonette needles were made in other colours too, though perhaps later, when bone needles were no longer made.  

Bonette needles, size 2, 12 inch 

Cronit was a brand of rayon for crochet and knitting (hence the name) in the 1940s and 50s.  Like the Anlaby needles, the Cronit needles would have been made for the Cronit company, to promote the brand. 

Cronit needles, size 8, 10 inch

These needles may have the brand name and size marked on the needles, but if so, the marking is completely invisible.  They are only identifiable because of the paper label. 

D is for Duralite.  The paper label reads Shrimpton's Duralite, so this was a brand name of Alfred Shrimpton & Son, a long-established needle manufacturing company in Redditch.  The needles are coated aluminium. 

Duralite needles, size 13, 10 inch

They have a flattened area towards the head, embossed with Duralite on one side and the size on the other.   There are Duralite crochet hooks in the collection, too, which are marked in the same way. 

I know nothing about Ezeenit needles.  We have a single needle in the collection, along with a very discoloured pair - the photo shows both ends of the single needle. It is rather soft plastic, which makes it very bendy, though in its favour, it is clearly marked.    

Ezeenit needle, size 9, 12 inch

Flora MacDonald was a brand name of Abel Morrall Ltd., needle manufacturers in Redditch.  The name was originally used only for sewing needles, but then applied also to these unusual knitting needles.  

Flora MacDonald needles, size 7, 12 inch

The needle is only the stated size (7, i.e. 4.5 mm.) for a short length (about 4 inches) at the pointed end, the rest is much thinner.  Oddly, the narrow part of the needle is steel, while the thicker part (and the head) are some other (non-magnetic) metal.  Possibly it is an aluminium alloy, since knitting needle ads sometimes claimed that pure, uncoated aluminium could discolour knitting wool.  A size 7 needle entirely in steel would be heavy, as well as liable to rust, but I don't know why the Flora MacDonald needles were not made in the aluminium alloy throughout - as Stratnoid needles were, for instance.  It seems a bit of a gimmick - and I don't think that Flora MacDonald knitting needles were current for very long.  

The name Flora MacDonald name is stamped into the head of each needle. The thicker part of the needles is stamped with the size, and a registered design number, 703016, which dates it to 1924. 

Registered design no. 703016

The only pair of Golden Spinning Wheel needles in the Guild collection are a slightly translucent yellow (or gold) - I assume in reference to the name. 

Golden Spinning Wheel needles, size 5, 15 inch

I searched for "Golden Spinning Wheel" in the newspapers in FindMyPast,  and found a few ads for the shops of John Smith & Co. (Wools) Ltd. from the 1920s and later.  Further searching found this article on the company.  The main shop was evidently in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, though later there were shops all over Scotland, and in England too.  The Sauchiehall shop had a golden spinning wheel as its shop sign.  The shops sold knitting wools, as well as ready-made clothing, and many other things as well.   I don't know for certain that these Golden Spinning Wheel needles were made for sale in the John Smith shops, but I think it's very likely. 

H is for Hella.  (You would think that it would be fairly easy to find knitting needles brands beginning with H, but this is the only pair in the Guild collection.) The needles are metal - not steel, so I guess an aluminium alloy.  I don't know anything else about them.   

Hella needles, size 10, 12 inch

I is for Ivoree.  (I guess now it would be spelt Ivori - equally annoying.)  We only have one Ivoree needle in the collection.  It is cream plastic,  presumably to imitate ivory, but it is not as smooth as ivory, or bone either.  

Ivoree needle, size 7, 12 inch

To represent J, I have chosen Jaeger needles.   

Jaeger needles, size 7

The Jaeger company started selling knitting wools in the 1930s, along with pattern booklets produced in association with Leach's, who published many needlecraft booklets at that time.  I wrote about one of the Jaeger pattern booklets in the collection here. The lettering on the needles dates them to the 1930s as well. 

K is for Kirven.  No idea about these. 

Kirven needles, size 8, 12 inch

Ladybird needles are white plastic, like several of the other plastic needles shown here.  We only have one pair of Ladybird needles, so I don't know if they were made in other colours too. 

Ladybird needles, size 5, 12 inch 

As well as the paper label, the needles themselves are marked, not very clearly.   

I searched (as usual) in the newspapers in FindMyPast, and found a couple of ads from 1935 mentioning Ladybird needles.  The ads were for Anchor Tricoton knitting & crochet cotton, but had a footnote in small print reading 'Always use Milward's "Ladybird" Knitting Pins and "Archerite" Crochet Hooks.'  

I think that our Ladybird knitting needles are the ones mentioned in the ads, though Milward's was one of the big needle manufacturers based in Redditch - making plastic needles would have been a significant departure for Milward's at that time. 

In the 1960s and later, there was a Ladybird brand of knitting wool associated with the Ladybird children's clothing made by the Pasold company, but I'm sure our needles are not from that time.  

I've just mentioned Milward's and we next have Milward Disc needles for the letter M.  

Milward Disc needles, size 14, 12 inch

These are grey coated aluminium needles, introduced in the late 1950s, and in production for many years.  A 1961 ad explained their advantages: 'Size recognition is easy and immediate, with the bold, clear, permanent numbers on "DISC" Knitting Pins. And with the plastic "KEEP", provided free with every pair, pairs of a size are kept together with no trouble at all.'  Milward Disc needles were produced in the same design for a long time, and were still current when metric sizes were introduced in the 1970s.  The larger sizes were made in plastic, also grey.  Milward Disc needles are still very common in charity shops.  

With M, we have finished the first half of the alphabet.  That's enough for one post - I'll finish the A-Z in the next.   

1920s Woolly Jumpers

 In the last post, I wrote about outfits in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection that were knitted in the early 1950s from 1920s patterns.  Here's another, based on the same set of Beehive Recipe Cards.   

And here is the photo from the card.

 

From Beehive Card No. 51 (1923)

The jumper is partly knitted and partly filet crochet.  The knitted parts (the front and back) are stocking stitch, with evenly spaced columns of pairs of eyelets (i.e. knit two together, yarn over, knit 1, yarn over, knit two together).  The photos make the construction fairly clear, I think.  The front is straight up to the armholes, then you increase each side for the sleeves.  The neck opening is made simply by dividing the stitches into two halves and knitting each half separately. There are five pieces of filet crochet as well, one for each shoulder, one for each sleeve, and one for the waistband. 

To put the jumper together, 'sew the pieces of insertion to the front shoulders, then join to the back, leaving a space for the back of the neck.'  The shoulder insertions are made to to the same length as the front shoulders, and the back is wider than the front, so that there will be a space at the back of the neck. 

And finally, 'make a twisted cord of the wool, thread it through the spaces at the waist, attach pom-poms (when threaded) at each end.'  The spaces are in the knitted part of the jumper, using the eyelets.  As with the dress in the last post, there are no instructions for making the cord, or the pom-poms.  (And that's not what I'd call a pom-pom - it's a crocheted ovoid, stuffed with something.)   Cord belts on jumpers, with tassels, pom-poms, etc. were very common in the early 1920s, and some patterns do give instructions for making stuffed crochet balls to go on the end of the belt, so perhaps the person who made the replica in the early 1950s had access to one of those patterns - or else just worked out how to match the photo on the recipe card.  

I don't like the fact that the back is wider than the front - that's not a good way to create a V neck.  And the jumper is very short - the belt appears to be higher than the model's natural waist, though that is easily modified.  I like the use of filet crochet combined with knitting, and I'm sure that a modern design could be based on this one.  But not one that I would like to tackle - my crochet isn't good enough.  

We think of 1920s knitwear as long and straight - worn by women with ideally no curves anywhere. But that wasn't always the case especially in the early 20s - as the photo of the recipe card shows, jumpers sometimes were loose and wide, with a well-defined waist (even if not in the right place). Another replica in the Coats-Patons donation is more typical of our view of 20s knitwear.  It is similar to the Eunice design above - it is a T shape, with a draw-string cord belt with pompoms.  But it is much longer, and I think the belt would sit at hip level, so would be pulled in very little.

I have not yet found the pattern for this jumper.  It is not one of the Beehive recipe cards, though some of the designs have a similar look, like those below. 

From Beehive Card No. 67 (1923)

From Beehive Card No. 84 (1924)

The pattern may have been one of the 'Helps to Knitters' leaflets (originally published by John Paton, Son & Co., and later by Patons & Baldwins). But we have very few of the 1920s 'Helps to Knitters' leaflets in the Guild collection, so looking for the original of the jumper will have to wait - I'll report here if I find it. 

A 1920s Costume

I wrote about the Coats-Patons donation in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection in my last post, and said there that some of them are knitted from vintage Patons & Baldwins patterns. I have identified some of the replica garments as knitted from  Beehive Recipe Cards, which I wrote about here. Although we only have a few of the cards in the collection, the British Library has a complete set of 86, and four of the replica garments given to the collection can be matched to the cards. Here's the first: 

And here is the illustration on the card:

Illustration from
Beehive Recipe Card No. 31

The description on the card is: 'The "Pauline" Costume, being made in TEAZLE Wool, is suitable for sports wear, it is knitted in two colours which, if tastefully chosen, will make a very distinctive one.  The skirt is worked in one piece and knitted so as to give a pleated effect.  The coat is worked in plain knitting, with a vest — knitted in the same manner as the skirt — fastened into the front of the coat.'   

So although the top looks like two separate garments, it is just one: the 'vest' is actually just a piece to join together the two sides of the coat.  It is not easy to see in the photo, but there is a deep band of fabric showing above the top of the vest — the model is wearing something like a camisole, and the outfit is more modest than it looks at first glance. 

Teazle wool was so called because you could create a furry effect on the finished knitting by brushing with a wire brush, though in this case the finished outfit is not intended to be brushed.  A few years ago, I recreated a tam pattern originally intended for Teazle wool, as I described here, and used Rowan Felted Tweed as a substitute, though without seeing the original Teazle wool it's impossible to know how similar they are. 

The back of the jacket is knitted first, and then continued into the two separate fronts (so there are no shoulder seams).  The broad collar, forming a full-length lapel, is knitted as a separate piece.  The skirt and vest are knitted sideways and the pleating is done by working alternate bands of garter stitch and stocking stitch, alternating the two colours.  

The suggested colours are Light Saxe (blue) and Pearl Green.  There is very little contrast between the colours in the black and white photo on the card, and I think that in colour the stripes would have given a subtle green-blue effect. The colours chosen for the replica are not subtle at all, and even in black and white it looks very obviously striped, but again if it was intended for showing on TV, the colours might have been chosen deliberately to show the stripes.

The Beehive Recipe cards in the British Library have British Museum date stamps (because the British Library used to be housed in the British Museum) showing the accession date.  The dates are December 1921 for cards 1 to 37, November 1923 for cards 38 to 74, and June or July 1924 for the rest.  Yarn shops advertised the cards from January 1921, and I think that the Pauline Costume can be dated to 1921.  

Another of the replicas is based on Card no. 26 for a Lady's Knitted Dress.

 

Here's the image from the card:

Illustration from
Beehive Recipe Card No. 26

The description from the card is "The 'Alicia'  Knitted Dress being light in weight is suitable for indoor or outdoor wear. The skirt is worked in a rib which gives a pleated effect, the remainder of the dress is knitted in a plain smooth fabric, with a simple pattern introduced at the neck and cuffs, whilst a thick twisted cord is used for the sash.  The garment being knitted in one piece — with the exception of the sleeves — is easily made and can be worked by any average knitter."  

Here's another photo showing the "simple pattern" at the neck. 

As the description says, the body of the dress is knitted in one piece, starting at the lower edge of the front, continuing up to the shoulders, casting on stitches in the centre to replace those cast off for the front neck opening, and then knitting the back of the dress downwards.  The sleeves are knitted from the cuff upwards, finishing with a straight edge.  This kind of construction was common in 1920s jumpers, though often the sleeves were also knitted in one piece with the body. 

There are no instructions for making the cord belt.  The card just says "make a cord — with tassels attached at each end", of the same wool used for the rest of the dress.  Evidently in the 1920s knitters were expected to know how to make cords, tassels, pompoms and the like, without further direction.  Personally, if I were making the dress I would like some indication of how many strands of wool to use and how long they should be, because a thick cord with tassels, like that shown on the card, would use a lot of wool, and mistakes could be expensive. 

I think it's an unexciting design, but it must have been so much more comfortable to wear than the fashions of 10 or 15 years previously (let alone Victorian fashions) that I can understand women wanting to wear a dress like that.  Pleated skirts (or rather skirts with a pleated effect) seem to have been popular in 1921, at least according to the Beehive cards.  Here are two more designs from the same  1921 tranche. 

Illustration from
Beehive Recipe Card No.30

The title of Card No. 30 is 'Lady's Knitted Dress', but actually it's a skirt and jumper.  The back and front of the jumper are knitted in one piece, as in Card No. 26, but there are separate ribbed pieces to go either side under the armholes.  I don't know why knitting designers of the 1920s were so averse to shoulder seams.   

Illustration from 
Beehive Recipe Card No. 41

Card No. 41 is another Knitted Costume ("Doreen" design), but unlike the Pauline design, above, the jacket is a proper jacket, without the awkward 'vest' piece.  It has some similarities to the jacket of the Pauline costume - the broad striped collar forming full-length lapels, and the belt going under the lapels at the front.  And the back and fronts are knitted in one piece, as before.  

(What's wrong with shoulder seams?  I avoid unnecessary seams where I can, and often choose to knit jumpers top-down, in the round, in one piece so that there are no seams at all, but these designs have seams elsewhere, just not shoulder seams.) 

If I were choosing a knitted costume to represent early 1920s knitting, I would choose the 'Doreen' design rather than the 'Pauline' design.  And I wouldn't choose the 'Alicia' design because it's not very interesting and doesn't seem characteristically 1920s.  But when the replicas in the Coats-Patons donation were made in the early 1950s, I have no idea what the purpose was, or why particular designs were chosen, so I can't judge.  

In my next post, I'll write about another replica garment that was knitted from a Beehive Recipe Card, and is much more attractive, in my view.    

  

Helps to Knitters 101

The spinners J. & J. Baldwin & Partners of Halifax and John Paton, Son & Co. Ltd. of Alloa merged in 1920 to form Patons & Baldwins, probably the largest manufacturer of knitting wool in the country.  Before the merger, both companies had published knitting patterns:  Baldwin's Beehive Booklets and Paton's Helps to Knitters series.  In spite of the merger, the component companies continued to operate more or less independently for several years, with the two separate series of pattern leaflets.  But eventually, they were merged into a single Helps to Knitters series.  

Some of the (very few) 1920s Helps to Knitters leaflets in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection list the current leaflets on the back.  This is the beginning of one such list:

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)  The jump in numbering after 84P marks the start of the new series, which began with Helps to Knitters No.101. 

(Geeky note: The earlier leaflets had been numbered from 1, but it seems that neither series had reached more than 90 leaflets by 1927, so 101 was a good starting point.  A few of the earlier leaflets remained in print for several more years, but were re-issued as Patons & Baldwins' Helps to Knitters, with their original number.  A 'P' was appended if the leaflets had originally been a Paton's Helps to Knitters leaflet; so for instance, there were two different leaflets numbered 69 (formerly a Beehive Booklet) and 69P (formerly a Paton's Helps to Knitters leaflet.))

We know that the new Helps to Knitters launched in 1927, because Beehive Booklets were still being advertised in January of that year, but then in April  Helps to Knitters No. 102 was advertised:  

Ad for Helps to Knitters 102, April 1927

But the most intriguing leaflet in the list is No. 101:  Hand-knitted spats, in various wools.  Whenever I have seen that entry, I have regretted that we don't have the leaflet.  In the 1920s,  men wore spats over shoes, to cover the ankles and top of the shoe, but they were quite formal, city wear - worn for instance by Bertie Wooster and his ilk in the P G Wodehouse stories, and were definitely not knitted.  So what were the Hand-knitted Spats like, and were they for men or women?  

Then, a little while ago I was looking in the excellent Trove archive of Australian newspapers (for something else entirely, of course) when I found the pattern!  It appeared on the women's page of  The Examiner (Launceston, Tasmania) in April 1927, under the headline "Hand-Knitted Spattees".  I have transcribed the pattern below.  

Paton and Baldwin's Helps to Knitters, No. 101M.

Materials. — 5oz. Patons' super Scotch fingering, 4-ply, or Beehive fingering, 4-ply. Two No. 14 steel knitting needles, 9in. wide elastic.

Measurements. — Length from top to heel (with top turned over), 14in.

Work at a tension to produce 10 stitches to the inch.

Cast on 96 stitches.

Work in rib of (K. 2, P. 2) for 4in.

Proceed as follows: —

1st row. — K. 7, P. 2, * K. 6, P. 2. repeat from to the last 7 stitches, K. 7.

2nd row. — K. 1, purl to the last stitch, K. 1.

Repeat these two rows for 3½in., ending with the 2nd row.

Decrease once at each end of the needle in the next and every following 8th row, until 82 stitches remain.

Work 7 rows without shaping.

In the next row; K. 1, K. 2 tog., work in pattern on the next 35 stitches, K. 2 tog., P. 2, K. 2 tog., work in pattern to the last 3 stitches, K. 2 tog., K. 1.

Continue decreasing in this manner in every 8th row until 74 stitches remain.

Decrease once at each end of the needle in every 8th row, until 70 stitches remain. In the next row work on the first 35 stitches, turn.

Work in pattern on these 35 stitches for half an inch, ending with a purl row.

Increase once at the beginning of the needle in the next and every following second row, whilst at the same time increasing once at the end of the needle in the next and every following 6th row, until there are 61 stitches on the needle. 

Purl the following row. Proceed as follows: —

1st row. — K. 1, increase once in the next stitch, work in pattern to the last 24 stitches, turn.

2nd and alternate rows. — Purl to the end of row.

3rd row. — K. 1, increase once in the next stitch, work in pattern to the last 27 stitches, turn. 

5th row. — K. 1, increase once in the next stitch, work in pattern to the last 30 stitches, turn.

7th row. — K-. 1, increase once in the next stitch, work in pattern to the last 33 stitches, turn.

9th row. — K. 1,. increase once in the next stitch, work in pattern to the last 36 stitches, turn.

11th row. — K. 1, increase once in the next stitch, work in pattern to the last 39 stitches, turn.

13th row. — K. 1. increase once in the next stitch, Work in pattern to the last 42 stitches, turn.

14th row. — Purl to the last 2 stitches, turn.

15th row: — Work in pattern to the last 45 stitches, turn.

16th row. — Purl to the last 3 stitches, turn.

17th row. — Work in pattern to the end of the row. Work 4 rows in plain knitting.

Cast off.

Work on the remaining 35 stitches to correspond. 

Work another spat in exactly the same manner.

With a damp cloth and hot iron press carefully.

Sew up the front seams of the foot. Sew up the back seams. Sew elastic at the instep.

I think there's no doubt that this is copied from the Helps to Knitters leaflet 101, even though it calls them spattees and not spats.   It's clear from the instructions that the spattees start off like knee-length socks, with a turn over, but the foot part is not like a sock, and there's something complicated happening, involving short rows.  I did some digging, and found this 1927 ad showing a woman wearing a knitted 'sports coat', a knitted 'stocking cap' (a cap and muffler combined), and 'knitted woollen spattees in a jacqard design'.     

From an ad for Debenham
& Freebody, November 1927,
showing knitted woollen spattees

I think that's what the spats/spattees in Helps to Knitters 101 would look like.  But I was intrigued by the last part of the instructions (labelled as 1st to 17th rows) which use short rows.  After knitting the part which eventually goes round the calf, with a turnover just below the knee, you split the stitches into two lots of 35,  and that's where the short rows come in.  I didn't want to knit a pair of spats, or even just one, but I wanted to find out what the short rows are doing, so I decided to start from the point where you start working on half the stitches.  

The fabric is supposed to be a sort of broken rib, and you are supposed to "work in pattern" as you increase and decrease, but I thought that would be confusing (it would confuse me, anyway) so I used stocking stitch instead.  And to make the shaping given by the short rows clearer, I knitted in stripes of two colours, changing after every two rows. Here's the result:

 

It's clear from this piece how the spat fits the foot, over a shoe.  The short rows shape the bottom edge of the spat,  The instructions are just to turn at the end of each short row, so there is a row of little holes just above the garter stitch edging - techniques like 'wrap and turn' which prevent the holes weren't in use then.  But in that position, the holes are not very noticeable. 

There seems to have been a brief fashion for wearing wool spattees for country wear, and I found a newspaper article which pinpointed their introduction, in The Scotsman in August 1926:  

Despite the heat and the fact that August has drawn the majority of society folk from London to the moors or Continental holiday resorts, there was quite a number of people who responded to Lady Strathspey's invitation to her "At Home" at the Savoy Hotel on Wednesday. .....

Tea and many delectable dainties for a hot afternoon were particularly acceptable in that cool, shaded room, but Lady Strathspey had arranged a novel interlude for her "At Home" which took the form of a mannequin parade to display the new Highland "spattees" which are to be such a chic adjunct for the sportswoman's wear. They are intended to replace Russian boots, the ugliness of which made them unpopular with most women. The new "spattees" are of shower-proofed wool or tweed and shaped to fit the leg, spat fashion, extending to the knee, with a fancy turnover top. Naturally, the guests were immensely interested in the novelty, and one or two caused no small amusement by trying on the "spattees" then and there. 

Another report of the same "At Home", in the Leeds Mercury, suggests that spattees were not just intended for country wear, but for wet weather in town, too.  The rising hemlines of skirts and dresses in the 1920s had revealed the silk stockings of ladies who had the money to buy such things, and also exposed the stockings to splashes of rain and mud - and the ankles to cold and wet.  

New Ankle Wear.  Many people have complained of the free display of the modern ankle, but even more have complained of its encasement in the unbecoming Russian boot. A cure for both ills was introduced at a reception given by Lady Strathspey in the Savoy Hotel this afternoon. 

This new fashion for protecting silken ankles in wet weather is called the Highland Spattee, and is made of showerproof wool, or wool and cotton, with a fancy top. Being made spat fashion it is easily slipped over the shoe and stockings, and it fits without the heavy creases which make the Russian boots so ungraceful. 

I think that spattees for town wear may have been a very short-lived fashion - the despised Russian boots (knee-length leather boots, I think) would have been much more practical in wet weather.  Suppose you went out for afternoon tea wearing your spattees in the rain, and took them off while you had tea.  Imagine how horrible it would be to put the wet, muddy spattees back on to go home again. But for country wear the fashion might have lasted longer.  And if you wanted a pair of knitted spattees, making your own would have been easy and economical.  The pair shown in the Debenham & Freebody ad, for instance, cost 19 shillings and 6 pence - almost £1.  Taking inflation into account, that would now be worth more than £60.  If they were hand-knitted (it doesn't say), that might be justifiable, but making your own would be much, much cheaper. 

It would still be good to have Helps to Knitters No. 101 as it was published in the U.K., if only to have an illustration, but failing that, the Trove pattern is nearly as good.  And it's fascinating to see that designers in the 1920s were quite able to use short rows to make complicated shapes like these spats.  

P.S.  Since writing this post, I've done some more digging in Trove, and found an ad for Helps to Knitters 101M, from June 1927. 

 This confirms what the spattees looked like as part of a complete outfit (though it shows them with a coloured stripe on the turnover, which doesn't exist in the instructions given earlier in the post).  It also again gives the number as 101M, and not 101.  I now think that this was an Australian version of the  leaflet (M for Melbourne, perhaps, where P&B's Australian base was) and a separate printing might have been necessary to allow the leaflet to be free in Australia, whereas the British version cost 3d.