Just watched the Arnolfini episode of A Stitch in time; the series is on RU-vid. Thanks for turning me on to this series. As a professional dressmaker for 40 years, now a professional quilter, I really identified with the tools and techniques.
Thanks so much for this video! My wish is that you write a book about this experience when you consider your knitting part of this project done. What a treasure that would be for us all.
Thanks for pointing me to that forensic clothing series! It was interesting to watch! While I have no interest in doing that type of sewing myself, it was so cool to see them do it.
Narrow = "decrease." They used k2tog, even in situations where we would mirror decreases today. Very occasionally a pattern would specify a sl1-k1-psso (same result as ssk, but ssk wasn't invented until the 1970s, by Barbara Walker).
I have a 'collection" of vintage Dutch hand-craft magazines (Maandblad voor handwerken / Ariadne). They are from my birth year 1956 until about 1962. They probably were of my grandmother (father's mother), who knitted a lot of garments for her grandchildren. If you're interested in a 1950s- 1960s knitting pattern, I could make a photo of the page (and translate the pattern from Dutch into English).
If you are interested in what a women in the early 1900s would wear to achieve the "pigeon breasted" look, check out Bernadette Banner's RU-vid video "Achieving that Classic Edwardian Shape: Reconstructing a 1902 Bust Bodice."
Hello Roxanne, do you think, being a writer, you would ever take all this information you have gathered and learned and write a book about your journey with these sweaters?
You most likely are aware of this already, but the Internet Archive has digitized many magazines from long ago, and you can find 1940's era women's magazines, some of which have knitting patterns, such as this: archive.org/details/The_Australian_Womens_Weekly_27_03_1943/page/n29/mode/2up Really fun to read through!
Thank you so much for the recap of your project. I really found it fascinating to follow your thought process throughout the project, from pattern selection through all the decision making, to figuring out the vague or missing instructions and piecing individual elements together. I can see why all this is of such interest to you. I was glued to the whole thing - I learn so very much from you. I miss my own knitting group & so thank you very much.
Thank you for getting me up to date. I had no idea of why you were knitting these sweaters. It looks fascinating. I could not do it even though I have knitted for years and taught for many of those. I have a book called Dainty. Work for Pleasure and Profit. It is of from the 1890’s I think. First 24 pages are missing. It has several knitted garments with pretty good instructions. A baby jacket, knitted lace, a beautiful infant bootie, a petticoat, a “countermand” a slip and even a vest. It was in my Grandmothers things that I treasure. I keep it tied with ribbon and in a cabinet for future Dainty work ladies. I enjoy your show very much. There are lots of lost needle works the book as well. I wonder if the art can revive. It is truly beautiful work. Thanks for reading such a long comment. Phyllis Wessen, NC
It was fun to the the sweaters and getting a description of them. I’m a fairly new subscriber since this spring so I have just watched back a few episodes yet. It is always a delight to see that a new episode is added.
As a new viewer thank you for explaining your overall project. How fascinating! I am going to look into A Stitch In Time - I think it is right up my alley.
Thank you for the tip to watch A Stitch In Time and the link to the museum. It was also great to see the vintage sweaters again. My favorites were the Shawl Collar and the 30’s yoke sweater.
Ouu! Fascinating news about Foundling Museum, fabric collection. It’s cool how your curiosity in knitting through the ages brings you to in a way to understand past knitters in their approaches to form, function and finally design through their patterns. Thanks for sharing.
I greatly enjoyed learning about this so thanks for taking us on this journey thru this project. To be honest, I've been watching you for awhile and I didn't know about this project. 😊
Glad you enjoyed it! It honestly never occurred to me to reiterate the larger project, until I was preparing to tell people about it who I knew wouldn't know!
I've watched you for a little while & even though you mentioned the other sweaters before, I don't think you showed the finished products all together before. I found the Victorian influenced sweater fascinating in how they made the fabric drape & wondered how long it took to knit all that extra material!! If people didn't know better, they'd think you're a wizard to be able to figure out all those things. Maybe there's a book in all this?
I wish I had realized you don’t know everything about anything to do with fabric. I found “A Stitch in Time” a while back. It never occurred to me that you might not know about this. I admire the way your mind works.
On the mention of genealogy intersecting with historical knitting, I have come across a photo of my great-great-grandmother wearing a knitted cardigan. Would there be resources to help reverse engineer a sweater from a historic photograph?
I would post your photo and question to the All Things Vintage group on Ravelry to see if anyone recognizes the cardigan. It's possible that there might be a pattern out there already. Otherwise, we could help analyze details of the cardigan to give you ideas for how to approach the construction and the finishing details. Otherwise, the resources are just general knowledge of sweater construction, and how something would have likely been knit at the time period in question.
Hmmm...I didn't see that, and can't find it. IMDB says there is only one season of 6 episodes. Could you be thinking of a different series? If so, what is it? I would probably be very interested!