My Vintage Knitting Projects From Winter 2021 🧶Vintage Knitting Podcast 🧶

to my great surprise as somebody who makes sewing videos on the internet one of the most successful videos i've made on this channel is actually about knitting and i actually got loads of comments on that previous video which was oh make more knitting videos so here we are another knitting video don't say i don't give you what you want so that previous knitting video was everything i knit in 2020 and that was a year-long review of everything i made last year and um this is going to be a sort of similar video but instead of doing a whole year review i'm sort of doing a quarterly review so winter spring summer and autumn so this is the winter video and that's just so i can have a bit more time and space to talk about each project individually that being said i have actually made quite a lot of stuff this year already in terms of knitting so let's dive right into it before i waffle on any longer than necessary the very first thing i made this year was actually this 1940s pullover this is what's known as a pullover in britain sweater vest in the u.s i've seen it called various other things jerkins g-la all that sort of stuff i believe the pattern refers to it as a jerkin so that's probably what i'm gonna call it so i've got this knitted 1940s jerkin and it's knitted in rib and you can see it's got this sort of so it's got this diagonal rib motif and that is not only providing a little bit of visual interest but it also gives it a very nice sort of slim princess line shaping and this is a best way pattern and it's an actual pattern i've got a hard copy of this pattern in my collection of vintage knitting patterns and it's one i've been wanting to make for a little while because it's from quite a small quantity of yarn and the yarn i used for this is actually um vintage yarn or i you know i don't know if it's actually 1940s yarn but i got it second hand in a charity shop and i used this yarn previously to make my 1940s smock stitch twin set now you may remember from the previous video i ran out of yarn to finish the cardigan for that twin set so this is what i made from the unpicked wool from that cardigan and it was very easy to construct you know it's a front and a back piece the bands around the neck and the armholes are actually knit separately they're knit in straight sort of long thin strips of rib and then they are sort of eased and whipped onto the armhole and that was kind of difficult and kind of annoying and i'm not sure how much i like it and you can see i didn't do a very good job of um seaming it up at the front there it's a bit messy but oh well apart from that i really like this pattern surprisingly for something that i would associate as a very grandad type garment so i actually started this at the end of last year and i saw i finished it in the very first few weeks of january and it didn't take a lot of knitting you know so i've actually worn it quite a lot in the cold weather months because it gives you a surprising amount of warmth with not very much bulk being sleeveless you can probably see that it is just can you see this band here this sits here in the armpit and it's just a bit too wide for me and so it's bunching up and things like that so it doesn't fit perfectly but yeah i'd have really surprisingly gotten quite a lot of wear out of it i said this was a 1940s pattern but i actually think it's possibly a late 30s pattern and that is purely based on speculation because the thing with these bestway patterns if you're not familiar these best way amalgamated press patterns are very popular they're very common you see a lot of them available online and you find a lot of them hard copies on ebay on etsy in person as well i get most of mine from charity shops and they were really common really widely distributed by the amalgamated press which also owns i think women's weekly so i'm not entirely sure i know several people who are interested in vintage knitting have tried to find out more about the amalgamated press and it's really hard that it seems to um to be like been a newspaper company that's been taken over so i don't know if their archive still remains it seems that they have some sort of association these best way patterns with women's weekly uh some of the designs we i think are repeated in women's weekly so these hard copy patterns are quite difficult to date and the only sort of information we've got to go on is when they start publishing patterns that are titled things like a two coupon jumper because wool wasn't rationed in britain in world war ii until 1941. so if you're getting things that are uh marketed as a two coupon jumper or you know from odd months things like that save coupons those patterns are definitely post 1941 and so then buy because the best way patterns are numbered in you know sort of a chronological order you can kind of work backwards and forwards from 1941 to see whereabouts you are in history and this pattern has quite an early number it's only a three-digit number and so this pattern is almost certainly pre-rationing probably pre-world war ii hello editing claude here just popping in to say that i've done some more research and i've looked up the numbers system that i was talking about that can help us date when these patterns are from and i'm pretty certain that this ribbed jerking pattern is actually from 1941 because that pattern is number 863 and the first best way to coupon make do a men's style jumper that we see uh is number 886 so they're very close together they're probably from the same year so this jerking is probably actually 1941 itself if not 1940. so if you do have any of those hardcopy best way patterns you can also make an educated guess to about when they're from because as the war goes on paper was always rationed during the war but as the war goes on paper shortages increase drastically and so the patterns get smaller the paper gets much poorer quality things like that so if it's quite a big size and the number is pretty close to that 1941 mark uh you you're looking at those earlier years of the war as opposed to the later years of the war so just a few tips if you've got any of those patterns and you're trying to figure out where they're from yeah my final thoughts on this before we move on uh yeah this was a fun little project to knit up i've worn it a surprising amount it's not perfect because it was made from unpicked wool it's a little bit bobbly blocking has helped that and improved that uh but yeah who knew i needed a jerking in my life like this one of the things that's really interesting to me about knitting up these vintage patterns is you kind of start to get a better understanding of some of the fashion trends we see in the 1940s i can absolutely understand why these were fashionable during this period for women so it's very quick and easy to knit uses less wool than a cardigan or a jumper but keeps you almost as warm if you've got a jacket on your arms or something so that's the kind of insight you don't really get unless you actually make up a garment and wear it you know so that's been very interesting about this one so moving on the next project i finished and actually uh the reason why i actually made that jerkin was because you may remember i was procrastinating cutting the sticks on my mary wallin yell cardigan i made a video where i did cut the steets if you're interested what and you don't know what that means feel free to watch that so having finished my little 1940s jerkin i cracked on i cut the sticks and i finished the sleeves for the yell cardigan yes this project really was a challenge that's not necessarily a bad thing i like my knits to be challenging there's nothing i hate more than just endless rows of stocking stitch so uh yes i did i did enjoy the knitting process of this but it was tough and it happened to coincide with a time that was my health wasn't great and my cognitive impairment was particularly bad so it wasn't ideal that meant that this project got really drawn out and it kind of felt like it was hanging over me and all that sort of stuff so to have it finally finished feels really wonderful and i really love the way it looks i absolutely love it it's so interesting because when i finished it and i started to wear it around the house my mum said to me do you know that cardigan is so you and it absolutely is this is everything i want from my knitwear this is everything i want from my personal style i absolutely love it that being said it's so in itchy oh my god the shetland wall why did nobody tell me about the shetland wall being so itchy to wear i have really sensitive skin i must admit but it is not a pleasant experience to wear and that is so annoying because i so love the way it looks also constructionally the sleeves are a bit narrow on me and i don't know whether that's because uh my tension knitting in the round here is a bit off but yeah so that with it being so itchy it's kind of like oh fine wear a long sleeve top underneath it but if i wear a long sleeve top underneath here it's just a bit tight on the arms annoying also i did block this i blocked it with the instructions that were on the back the the cardboard label for the wool and it said to steam block it but even so you can see this this collar just wants to roll out which is kind of annoying because this is so beautiful i also you might be able to tell ran out of wool here this band is supposed to be all this darker color and mine's odds and ends because i didn't have enough dark wool left i don't know whether that's because the pattern was wrong but i think um i checked my notes for knitting this project and i had to start again because i had several twists in my cast on you have to cast on like nearly 400 stitches in the round and i ended up with with several twists so i think i just cut it and binned it so maybe if i hadn't done that i would have had enough wool um yeah so i mean i don't mind i think it's it's it's quite pretty actually having this slightly lighter edge i quite like it but i might need to re-block this because the shape is of that color is really annoying i've been waiting for nicer weather to do that basically because otherwise a cardigan this thick would just take years to dry uh in the winter months here in the uk you know so hopefully with blocking it might improve some of the things i don't know what to do about the really scratchy wall though if you have any tips for that do mention them in the comments and i'll give them a go because it's such a shame i love it so much but it's just not a pleasure to wear so yeah i don't know if i'll be making another shetland wool project again i don't know if i'll be making another farewell project this involved again not for a little while at least anyway okay next on the list moving on so having finished that contemporary project i wanted to go back and do another vintage knitting project because that's really why i knit i love all those vintage knitting patterns but this time i've had this pattern in my collection a little while and it's one i've been wanting to make not necessarily because i really want the finished garment but because the construction was so intriguing so this is a 1950s it's not exactly a cardigan it's described as a tailored jacket and i don't really do that 1950s style vintage thing really anymore i never really did to be honest it's not my favorite era but the construction of this was so fascinating to me i knew i had to make this pattern i had to give it a go so starting at the bottom we've got one of these knitted folded hems so um i think this one is just stitched up yeah i think i just stitched it up but i have also seen it where you pick up the stitches from the cast on or edge and you knit the two together so you get a folded knitted hem as opposed to just a cast off edge at the bottom then it's you've got this this is a knitted functioning pocket it's like integrated completely into the knitting which was really interesting to do it's also shaped simultaneously at the side and with darts so you can see the dart shaping here and it's shaped at the side seam and it's also got this very interesting knitted revere lapel facing whatever you want to call it um so you sort of knitted it out like this and then folded it in half you know sometimes you get those sewing patterns with the continuous facings yeah you this was that but knitting it so to get that shaping was really intriguing a really fascinating project so those are the front pieces oh yes of course on the other side you've got to work the buttonholes and because of this double facing thing you're actually working two buttonholes and then folding it in half and matching them up and stitching them together never seen anything like that before the back is also shaped with two darts and um part of the reason why i was i was drawn to this shaping is because you might remember last year i made that elena woodville cardigan and that is shaped with darts and i really love just the way that looks i can't explain it the fit of that is so beautiful and so unusual in knitwear i don't you don't see that very often and i really love it so i wanted to try that again with this and then we've got a raglan sleeve which okay fine pretty straightforward but these sleeves themselves are actually knitted horizontally so you start at the bottom of the sleeve and you cast on and cast off and shape to sort of get the length and so you know it's not like you're working from here up you sort of work like this along the sleeve it was really unusual the cuffs you've also got double fold back cuffs which were shaped sort of like this and then you fold them in half and the collar as well the color is shaped flat and folded in half and then sort of whipped on and you can see even the shape of the collar it's got a grown-on stand it's it was just a fascinating make and i'm so glad i made it i made an inexpensive yarn because i knew this is not something i'm going to get a whole load of wear out of i wasn't knitting this for the finished garment i was knitting it for the process so this is king cole double knit touch of merino so i've used that king cole touch of merino before in four ply weight and this is the double knit weight version and uh it's cheap it does the job it doesn't look great but um i'm actually kind of impressed with these semi-solid colors i think they look um more expensive than the the like the previous time i made that honey bop cardigan and i made it in red and it doesn't look quite as good so i think having that sort of model of mottled effect helps this cardigan isn't quite finished it still needs buttons and the buttons have finally arrived these buttons they came off ebay and they're sort of um mid-century-ish carved different shades of black and gray they're not anything particularly special but i just wanted them to sort of match the color scheme and do the job really so i don't know how much wear i will get out of this cardigan like i say it's not really my style it's also quite thick i don't really tend to knit uh in weights heavier than four ply these days because they feel so bulky to me um you know i'm used to sort of these lighter weight 1940s style knits now and so anything above fourply feels you know so thick to me so as a result it's very warm and we're we're coming towards the end of april now as i'm filming this video and so this might not be something i get anywhere out of until next winter because it is on the thicker side but oh well i'm very pleased i made it it was a really interesting project i had a lot of fun sometimes that's enough reason to make something isn't it for the fun of it moving on so the next thing i've made is actually something i've wanted to make for years it's been on my knitting pattern wish list for ages and while there are lots of free versions of this pattern online i actually paid what i consider to be quite a lot of money for a 1940s knitting pattern to own a hard copy of this pattern i mean i paid eight pound for it so it's not like it broke the bank but still i never normally pay anything more than two pound for a vintage knitting button and the reason is it's this one it's the lavender uh rainbow jumper that's a classic classic 1940s pattern or at least we think of it as a classic 1940s pattern and this is something i'll talk more about in a little bit but yes you see this a lot online you see it in a lot of tv and film most recently i think is uh scarlett johansson wears one in what's that film called jojo rabbit something like that yeah this pattern is everywhere uh i made mine in it's it's a scandinavian company so i'm not going to be able to pronounce it so i'll put it here it's uh organic it translates as like organic summer wool so it's a wool cotton blend it's a four ply and it's by the company is called cameras i think so they tend to do sugary pastelly colors and i thought that was perfect for this so i've kind of i've been nicknaming this my refreshers jumper if you know what refreshes are i don't know if you have that sweet where you are in the world but um yeah they kind of come in these very sherbety candy colors my refreshes jumper i don't usually do pastels generally in my wardrobe i tend to be warmer earth tones but i actually do really like this and i really like wearing it as a pattern i absolutely understand why it's so popular because even though it's knitted with well vintage three-ply weight or contemporary four-ply weight you knit it with uh number eight needles which is four millimeter god knows what that is in us i think six so even though you're knitting it in four ply it knits up really quickly and it knits up to quite a loose breathable lightweight fabric it's also this pattern looks very jazzy looks kind of complicated but it's actually really easy to do you you create these little v's i've also seen them referred to as bunny ears just by slipping stitches so it's essentially stocking stitch stockinette but every third stitch every fourth stitch i can't remember you slip one and you keep slipping it until you change color and so you get these this striped effect uh so yeah it was a really quick and easy knit and i've been wearing it quite a lot so what i wanted to talk more about this is this pattern is so iconic to us as the 1940s make do and men's style knitting pattern and yet i do wonder whether that's our modern bias looking back or whether that has come from the contemporary time period you know was this pattern actually that popular in the 1940s or do we like it as modern people who are interested in vintage because it speaks to our assumptions of what the 1940s were so i tried to find out an answer to that and i did a little bit of digging to see if i could find examples of this and other knitting patterns that are really common really popular on in instagram with vintage knitters and things like that because you know i've got a lot of time on my hands at the minute so why not so i try to find examples of these make do and mend odds and end style jumpers in dress collections in photographs and that sort of things and i'll be honest with you i didn't have a lot of success because you know we see lots of these very specific ottoman patchwork jazzy patterns odds and ends two coupon jumpers we see a lot of the like printed patterns have survived but not a lot of the garments have survived so i'm kind of wondering whether people actually were knitting these patterns or were they not bothering and now obviously just because they haven't survived doesn't mean they didn't exist and just because we don't know about it we don't have any evidence of it doesn't mean it didn't happen so i've been trying to sort of riddle this out and there's some things i've had some thoughts and so i've kind of come to a few conclusions about this firstly i imagine the reason that we don't have a lot of these garments surviving is partly collection bias in terms of um museums but also because clothes rationing hit the less off much harder if you were a wealthy woman with an extensive wardrobe in 1941 your clothes were probably better quality so they lasted they were you also had more of them so you could rotate through more of them so they got less wear so you probably weren't that affected by clothing rationing however poorer women say with a lot of children uh who were able to afford less clothing who had less clothing to begin with and it was a poorer quality they were probably the ones who were more reliant on this make do amend mentality on having to make things do so that possibly the reason why they haven't survived was because these garments were worn by working class women they didn't save their clothes they wore it until they wore out or they unpicked the wall and re-knitted it things like that and also they didn't have their photograph taken that often and this is what's quite telling about this i think because when i was looking for photographs of ordinary people during world war ii there weren't a lot of them or if they were they tended to be out in the streets so they had an overcoat on so you couldn't see what jumper they were wearing however all that being said i have found a photograph well i found several photographs of these make-do and men's style knits they tend to be more common on children i've noticed sort of stripey jumpers feral jerkins that sort of thing they seem to be quite common i imagine that's because children grew so often i've also seen quite a few examples where women are wearing a very plainly shaped jumper but it's knitted in stripes and i imagine that's probably because these women were busy and they did not have the time to be faffing around with fancy patterns so if they were making an odds and ends jumper they probably were using a pattern they already had because they didn't want to buy a new one or they were using a very simple pattern that they knew they could knit up quickly and rather than faff about they just knitted stripes into it fair enough but i have found an example of this rainbow jumper this iconic 1940s make to amend pattern as we think of it but i have found a photograph of a woman actually wearing it in her day-to-day life in the 1940s during world war ii and it's definitely this pattern i know it's definitely this pattern because of the placement on the buttons of the shoulder if i can license the photograph i will put it here if i can't there will be a link in this in the description and it's of a woman it's she's an east end housewife and her house has been damaged during the blitz and she's talking to the bomb squad on her doorstep and it's a very sort of iconic like 1940s world war ii look it's absolutely fascinating to me that i've actually been able to find one so um because you know i do always wonder are these patterns there are several of these patterns you've probably seen them if you're into vintage knitting there's this victory jumper one there's the one with the parrots you see quite a lot there's this one you see quite a lot we as modern knitters dressing vintage have these patterns that we like and that we continue to knit and everybody seems to be making them and i do wonder is that because of people sort of jumping on instagram trends is that the influence of instagram do we favor these patterns because they fit into our contemporary nostalgic idea of what the 1940s should be or do we think the 1940s looked like make do amend rainbow jumpers because that is actually what the evidence tells us i still don't think i have a definitive answer to that but yes it does seem that there is at least one example out there of this jumper being made and worn by an individual in the 1940s okay moving on so those are all the finished objects i've got a couple of works in progress that i also want to talk about so you can look out for those the first one though is a test knit so i can't actually show you that just yet but keep your eyes peeled on my instagram if you don't follow me because i'm sure i shall be shouting about that pattern once i'm allowed to so having said i don't work in double knit anymore the next project is actually in double knit and uh i've got the sort of bits of it that i've finished here so far to show you but this is from a book called i think it's called vintage hollywood knits i can't remember and this is a book it's not of vintage knitting patterns it's not like susan crawford's a stitch in time it's somebody has taken photographs of vintage hollywood stars wearing knitwear and reversed engineered the patterns and i have made one of these patterns before which was the joan crawford jumper but i made that quite early on in my vintage knitting journey if you like and i made it in pound shop acrylic lovely it's also a bit too big i didn't really read the size guide there was a lot of ease and things like that so it's not an entirely successful project and i don't wear it that often this time around though i'm making a different style and this one is the claudette colbert and i kind of uh just love the joke of the fact the cardigan's called claudette and i'm called claude and it's this 1930s style which is a lot more my thing particularly now since i've had my hair cut and it's this very classic 1930s tyrolean you know hungarian eastern european style that was very popular and it's knitted in this basket weave pattern so this is the back and you can see it's made in these blocks of basket weave just knit and purl stitches very straightforward pattern it's got some very interesting waist shaping as you can see it's quite dramatic and so yes it's knit up in this basket weave and then you there's a contrast crochet border and it's embroidered with flowers to give it that peasant style or whatever they call it so i'm excited to be working on that project but i'm i'm sort of switching between projects i don't often have more than one knitting project on the go at once i must admit but i'm pausing this one because i'm also taking part in a collaboration so this collaboration is vintage pool party and it's being hosted by gwen from gwen's shenanigans and last year she knit herself i think it's a 1920s 1930s style swimsuit and she said she wants to do it again and so she put out a call for other people to be involved and turn this into a little collaboration and you may remember that last year i um sewed myself a swimsuit a 1950s style swimsuit so this time i thought i would knit myself a swimsuit so i'm knitting where is it so the pattern i'm using is from this book this is another um hard copy i didn't pay a lot of money for this i think i paid a fiver for this and so this is the teenage book by stitch craft and so i'm making this pattern sun top and trunks is she in frame yes there she is you can see her so this pattern is being a teenage book this pattern is incredibly small so i've had to do quite a bit of grading to get this to fit me i'm grading up about four inches overall and i've never really done that before i know how to do it in theory and i'm confident in my maths so i'm sure i've done it right but yes that's a first time for this project and i've also been talking to a few people about this because this pattern and a lot of these vintage knitting patterns for swimsuits they're made in real wool which seems like a very odd choice to me uh admittedly it possibly was all that was available but of course wool is known for its absorbent properties so it will can absorb something like three times its own weight in water so it seems a really stupid choice for something that you're going to get wet that being said wool also has a natural level of imperviousness to water it's kind of slightly water repellent so i mean this is called sun top and trunk so i'm kind of guessing the idea is that you wear this to the beach and if it gets a little bit wet it doesn't matter but you don't actually go swimming in it but then again i've also seen in museums examples of you know swimming suits actual costumes designed for swimming made of wool and victorian bathing costumes are also made of wool and stuff as well so i don't know i don't know but anyway i've decided to make mine in cotton because if i couldn't stand the feel of that scratchy mary wollen cardigan on my arms really didn't want to make a swimsuit out of it so yeah i've gone for cotton so i have finished the front of the trunks and they look like this so i'm making it in this sort of two-tone colorway and so i've gone for shades of blue this lighter blue i had in my stash and i've had it in my stash for quite a while and so i just ordered more matching wall in a different shade to make this up because i'm trying to be a bit better at knitting and sewing from my stash so you know some of the wool has come from my stash and some of the wool isn't new and it's this uh mila mia cotton um it's from lovecraft's i think i got it from lovecraft i don't think i've got the label anymore uh but yeah it's called naturally soft cotton or something like that so i've finished one half of the trunks and i'm currently working on the back and then of course we've got to start on the top uh but i'm really excited i'm really excited to be working on this a few people who are sewing have already finished their swimsuits obviously sewing's quite a lot faster so i will put a link to their videos in the description as well and i'm sure there'll be a playlist i'm not sure i'll put info in the description if you're interested in finding out more or joining in or anything like that so i think that is everything i've got lots of knitting plans for the rest of the year of course i have i've got a house stuffed to the rafters with wool so there will be plenty more knitting content coming on this channel trying to be a bit more intentional with the things that i knit i've noticed that i really like to knit jumpers and i really like to wear cardigans so i'm going to try and knit more cardigans fewer jumpers that sort of thing i also like i was talking about that 1950s project i made as fun as it was to knit i'm probably not going to wear it a lot so i'm trying to deliberately choose things that i know i'm going to wear even if that's less fun to knit but you know every now and again i'll make one of these projects just for the sake of it i think i'm also trying to figure out how to make uh knitting project videos a bit like i do with my sewing projects but of course knitting is very repetitive and so sort of hours and hours of footage of me just knitting stockinette doesn't really seem like interesting content so i haven't really found a solution to that yet but i'm trying so feedback on that is very welcome or if you have any suggestions about how i can make knitting videos a little less dull than me just knitting for hours uh do let me know if you are interested in making any of the things i've mentioned in this video there will of course be links to the description to the patterns and to some of the yarns i've used some of them might be affiliate links if the patterns that i've mentioned that were hard hard vintage copies from my collection the jerking and that 1950s jacket i will put them in my etsy shop if they're already available somewhere online i'll just send you a link to those instead i would love to know what you're working on i would love to know if you've made any of the things that i've mentioned in this video if you're making a swimsuit for the vintage pool party collab let me know leave me a comment let me know what you're working on i think that's everything and so all that's left to say is thank you very much for watching

Channel: Retro Claude

Views: 16,833

Keywords: #vintageknitting, vintage knitting patterns, vintage knitting podcast, knitting, knitting podcast, 1940s knitting patterns, 1940s knitting patterns free, 1950s knitting patterns, marie wallin, marie wallin yell cardigan, yell cardigan, 1940s rainbow jumper, make do and mend, 1940s vintage fashion, handmade vintage fashion, vintage pool party, 1940s pullover, ww2 knitting patterns, knitting projects, knitting patterns, knitting inspiration, vintage knitting inspiration, knits

Id: hxeGlGz5yBM

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021