Knitting Vintage: Part One: an Introduction

It’s a big week over here – before we get started, just a reminder that today, I’ll be guest blogging at Lime & Violet with a short article on how to achieve a vintage look when you’re updating a pattern for modern fit.  Tomorrow, I’ll be interviewed Friday about the history of vintage knitting over on WhipUp.  It was a really fun interview to do – go check it out and you’ll get an overview of how knitting changed through the years from 1920 to 1959.

And now for the meaty goodness:  Today is the start of something fun here at the Retroknit blog, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride. This post is the start of a new series that will provide useful information to anyone who’s ever wanted to knit from vintage patterns – and some tips for anyone who’s ever wanted to alter a pattern to fit without losing its original style.

Everywhere I go, I’m amazed by the number of people who tell me that they want to work with vintage patterns, but they just don’t know where to start. Vintage patterns can be tricky to work with, but they can also be wonderfully rewarding. With a little sleuthing and a little math, they can easily be converted for the modern knitter.

So to make it easier, every Monday and Thursday for the next month, I’ll be presenting Knitting Vintage – a series of posts on (almost) everything you need to know when knitting from vintage patterns. Here’s what you can expect:

• Intro to Vintage Knitting: Finding, Evaluating & Understanding Vintage Patterns
• Crash Course in Fashion History: Understanding the Era = Understanding Fit & Style
• Determining What Size to Knit and A Treatise on Ease in Vintage Patterns
• Altering Your Pattern to Fit Without Losing Its Vintage Appeal
• Choosing a Yarn to Match your Vintage Pattern
• Using Swatching as a Tool in Vintage Knitting
• But is it Yours? What You Need to Know About Vintage Patterns & Copyright

…We’ll start today with how to find and evaluate vintage patterns, how to interpret them into modern knitting terms, and how to do some simple math.

Knitting Vintage, Part One: Introduction – Finding, Evaluating & Understanding Vintage Patterns

Finding Vintage Patterns

If you started out with your grandma’s pattern stash, you’re ready to start. But if you aren’t so lucky, you’ll need to find a source. I found most of my patterns at garage and estate sales back when I was a vintage clothing dealer trolling sales all the time, but that’s a rather time-consuming way to develop a pattern library. Most vintage knitters do one of two things – they find their vintage books through online auction sites such as eBay, or they seek out commercial websites that offer reasonably priced reproductions of vintage patterns that have passed into the public domain. A few blogs and websites also offer out-of-copyright patterns free of charge. Occasionally, you can find vintage patterns in flea markets, antique malls and vintage clothing shops – usually very reasonably priced. It’s always worth a look to see what you might find.

Evaluating Patterns

You may not have much of an opportunity to look at a pattern if you’re buying online. But if you’re lucky enough to get a good look at a pattern before you buy, read it over and try to consider it the same way you would a modern pattern. Start with the photo. Is the garment shown so that you can tell what’s going on in the picture, or is the model in some weird pose that doesn’t let you see it completely? Are there hints about the pattern that you can tell from the photo – roughly what gauge it’s in, what type of yarn (smooth or hairy? Boucle? Ribbon?) what kind of garment it is (set in sleeves? Raglan? Intarsia or fair isle? etc.), whether or not there’s a lot of detailing work you may or may not like doing? Then, once you’ve evaluated the photo, it’s time to take a good look at the pattern itself, reading all the way through it. Is it complete? How detailed are the instructions? You may choose to knit a pattern despite any eccentricities you might discover on a good read-through, but it’s good to know in advance what you’re getting into.

Understanding Vintage Abbreviations

The abbreviations in vintage patterns can be confusing, because there were no universal standards for abbreviation and because they changed over time. But with a little practice you can easily translate them into modern knitting terms. Here is a list of the most common abbreviations found in vintage patterns, and what they mean in modern terms:

Knitting needle and crochet hook sizes may also be confusing in vintage patterns. British and Canadian patterns used a different naming convention than did American patterns, and metric sizes were rarely listed. Use this needle size conversion chart for reference:

Crochet hooks also followed unusual standards. For a list of crochet hook sizes, see this chart from antiquepatternlibrary.org.

What’s Missing From This Pattern?

You may notice that vintage patterns frequently lack many features that we’ve grown accustomed to in their modern counterparts: namely, charts, schematics, and sometimes even yardage, finished measurements, or even gauge. If you don’t see one or more of these elements in your pattern, don’t despair – with a little sleuthing you can still figure out what you need to know in order to knit. The key is to start with what you do have:

• If you prefer to work from charts, usually they are easy to make using the written instructions provided in the pattern. You can use a knitting chart generator such as the one offered by Astroknits, but I prefer to write them out myself on graph paper, using the standardized symbols for knitting charts.

• If you have gauge and finished measurements, you may find it helpful to make your own schematic by carefully drawing out the shape of your garment. Read the pattern carefully to figure out how things fit together, and refer to your photo to answer questions wherever possible. You can draw out your chart either by measuring the length and width listed in the pattern and then drawing it out on plain paper with a ruler, using 1/8 or ¼ inch in your drawing for every inch of the actual size of the garment. Or if you have a row gauge for the pattern, you can use my preferred method, either counting or calculating rows and then drawing them out using knitter’s graph paper, which you can print for free here.

• If a gauge is listed but there are no finished measurements listed, simply multiply the gauge by the number of stitches to get your finished measurement.

• Conversely, if no gauge is listed, just divide the finished measurement of the garment by the number of stitches across (at, for instance, the chest) to get the target gauge for a project.

If you find yourself with a pattern that lists neither gauge nor finished measurement, your task will be a little harder, but don’t give up just yet. Once you’ve looked at your pattern a little more closely, and thought about what kind of yarn you should use, determining gauge will be much easier. We’ll talk about yarn choices a little later in this series – but before we get there, next, let’s take a whirlwind tour through vintage fashion history, so we know exactly what it is you’re planning to knit, and why your pattern is written the way it is.

Next Up on Monday: Knitting Vintage Part Two: A Crash Course in Fashion History: Understanding the Era = Understanding Fit & Style

note: this article is copyright 2009 Kristen Rengren. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any of the contents of this article, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author is strictly forbidden.

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