Vintage Baby Knits: More Than 40 Heirloom Patterns from the 1920s to the 1950s

289 Pages·2009·8.9 MB·English

by  Kristen Rengren

Published in 2009 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang An
imprint of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Text and illustrations copyright © 2009 by Kristen
Rengren Photographs copyright © 2009 by Thayer
Allyson Gowdy
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rengren, Kristen.
Vintage Baby Knits / Kristen Rengren ; photography
by Thayer Allyson Gowdy.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4532-6843-8
1. Knitting--Patterns. 2. Infants' clothing. I. Title.

TT825.R424 2009
746.43'2041--dc22
2008028231
Editor: Melanie Falick
Designer: Onethread
Production Manager: Jacqueline Poirier

115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011
www.hnabooks.com
Introduction

Chapter One
Getting Ready to Knit

Chapter Two
projects to knit for baby

Chapter Three
resources

Abbreviations

Special Techniques

Acknowledgments

about the author

Introduction

The first time I saw a vintage knitting pattern booklet, I was captivated. ”Are
you sure you want all of those?” asked the lady whose garage-sale collection I
was cleaning out, as I handed over every last laundry quarter in my pocket. I
didn’t need clean laundry. I was in love.

I’ve admired vintage clothing for as long as I can remember, and by the summer
when I spotted those first pattern booklets, I’d already been knitting for ten years
—but my two passions had never really connected before. And, all of a sudden, I
had a wonderful idea—I would make “vintage” clothes from scratch by updating
old patterns!

From that moment forward, I hunted high and low for this new quarry. I was
already working as a vintage clothing dealer, which meant I spent much of my
time milling about estate sales before dawn, combing through thrift stores, and
scouring eBay at all hours to find trim Dior suits, slinky Schiaparelli gowns, and
other vintage treasures to send off to boutiques in New York and Hollywood. By
multitasking and searching out pattern booklets at the same time, within two
years I was able to collect hundreds of them from the 1920s through the 1950s.

The baby pattern booklets—loaded with black-and-white photos of babies in
handknits, as well as lively illustrations of frolicking tots, friendly zoo animals,
and smiling storks—always intrigued me most. The projects were classic and
simple in style, yet detailed enough to hold even a highly distractible knitter’s
interest, and I could easily imagine modern babies wearing them.

I spent months studying those patterns. Most called for a long-forgotten yarn,
such as 5 ounces of Lady Betty or Germantown Zephyr, and a particular needle
size, but did not specify fiber content, yardage, or gauge, or even include a
schematic. I read each pattern word by word, sketching my own schematics
along the way, in order to understand the project’s construction. I created charts
where there were none. And I compared one pattern to another in order to learn
about the styles and knitting conventions of the day. Then I began swatching
with modern yarns of different gauges and fibers to determine which would
work best for each project.

I went through this process for more projects than could ever fit into this book in
order to determine which ones would work together to make the best collection.
Once I had narrowed down my options, I began testing each pattern, correcting,
revising, and resizing as necessary to suit the modern knitter (and baby), all the
while striving to maintain the classic spirit of the original design. Wherever
possible, I addressed issues of safety (removing buttons and ties) and
convenience (for instance, making sure that garments would be easy to get on
and off). Some patterns required only moderate adaptations, such as figuring out
the gauge, choosing a yarn, and adding multiple sizes (since many of these
patterns were originally written for only one or two sizes), while others required
overhauls that were more extensive in order to be usable today. From time to
time, a pattern didn’t work at all and had to be rewritten completely.

While I did include some quick-to-knit projects, the majority of the patterns
from this period seem to have been knitted at much finer gauges than a knitter
today might be accustomed to. A few patterns called for “Jiffy-Knit” or bulky
yarns, but most called for the equivalent of today’s fingering-weight yarn.
Accordingly, many of the projects in this book are knitted to gauges that may
seem small to the modern knitter. But because baby garments are so small, even
at finer gauges they can be worked quickly—and the results are not only
handsome and durable, but also boast true vintage style.

While my collection of vintage pattern booklets is large, vintage patterns are
actually rarer than you might imagine. Yarn companies in the 1920s through
1950s published pattern booklets by the thousands each month, but the average
knitter discarded them at season’s end. When I visited the U.S. Copyright Office
at the Library of Congress to painstakingly check the copyright status of each
book I had acquired, I was stunned to learn that rarely if ever had their
copyrights been renewed—if the original copyright had been applied for at all.
The companies that published these wonderful patterns did not seem to see the
value in preserving them. Moreover, with very few exceptions, the booklets did
not credit the projects’ designers. Their endless creativity went unrecognized,
except by the millions of women who gratefully knit their designs.

It is to these talented individuals that I dedicate Vintage Baby Knits. I can only
hope that they would be pleased by my efforts to recreate their work and to share
it here. I hope that you will enjoy these patterns as much as I have, and that the
projects you knit from them will become cherished treasures for generations to
come.