I’m going through a serious tidying phase at the moment and my current focus is my vintage knitting pattern collection. I’ve got a few weeks off in May and I plan to get out EVERY vintage pattern that I own, weed out any I don’t really want to keep and file the rest. After a bit of thought I’ve decided that I’m going to file them by date.
Working out the date of vintage patterns is often a case of educated guessing because they rarely have a publication date. You need to develop a good sense of fashion trends in knitwear as well as the accessories, hairstyles and other clothes that appear in the pictures.
Sometimes there are clues in the name of the designs, like “coronation vest” or “summer of love styles”. In the case of today’s pattern it’s this little snippet of text that tells me its from the first half of the 1940’s. A note about wartime yarn shortage is a pretty good giveaway when dating patterns.
With rationing and general shortages, enough yarn to make a whole jumper in the same colour wasn’t always possible. Worn knitwear was often unravelled and the useable yarn was reknit into new garments.
Tops with short sleeves and fair isle patterns or stripes were the answer when faced with odd amounts of yarn and the patterns in this pattern book are easily identifiable as early 1940s, even without the giveaway text.
Knitting patterns from the early 40’s always remind me that necessity really is the mother of invention.
