June Excursion: Sport Coat No. 9049

Since the June 1964 issue of Stitchcraft didn’t have any projects that I really wanted to make, I thought I would share another non-Stitchcraft, non-1960s “blast from the past” project that I recently completed.

A little back story: for the last couple of years, one of the wonderful mods from the “All Things Vintage” group on Ravelry has been transcribing serial stories from 1920s newspapers and posting them, one chapter a day. She supplements them with posts of photos or postcards from the era, as well as clippings from the same newspapers with advertisements, fashion advice, and all kinds of details that give context to the stories. The stories themselves are often quite hare-brained in terms of plot (the authors had to keep readers interested through 100+ chapters, so cliffhangers and ridiculous plot twists abound) but thoroughly entertaining, and give a lot of insight into social mores and lifestyles of the time.

As you might expect, we (the group’s members) enjoy these stories immensely and add to the entertainment by guessing the outcome or the next plot twist, making insightful or humorous comments on the characters and action, or adding our own spin-off ideas to the story (one member even re-wrote a chapter in the style of a post from the popular moral-advice-seeking “AITA” subreddit.) Out of all this fun, the idea was born to have a Knit-Along / Crochet-Along relating to the current story, where participants could make an item of clothing that one of the characters might have worn, and explain how the item would fit that character’s personality.

For my part, I love the stories but don’t usually knit items from the 1920s — unshaped, flowing upper-body garments make me look like I am wearing a sack. I do like the Fair Isle patterns which were enjoying a renaissance at the time, so looked for some of those, thinking I might make a slipover/vest/waistcoat for myself. Then a fellow All Things Vintage member helped me find the pattern shown above, which I knew would perfectly suit a friend of mine who is a huge 1920s fashion aficionado. Isn’t it dashing?

The pattern, from 1923, is written for Bear Brand Bucilla wool in stripes of fawn and brown, with additional contrast motifs in “Henna”. My friend did not want a beige and brown cardigan but did want a period-appropriate colour scheme, so we settled on navy blue and white with burgundy-red contrast, a popular “sport” combination of the time. My yarn was “Soft Merino” by Wolle Rödel, a very normal, easy-to-knit-and-care-for DK 100% wool.

The pattern was full of surprises, starting with the back, which is knit entirely in single-colour 1×1 ribbing. It is consequently very narrow, much more so than the wearer’s back, but stretches with movement. I was convinced it would make the cardigan too tight, or make the bands gap too much in the front, but the ribbing has enough “give” that it works out perfectly with the flat-knit Fair Isle fronts. The overall effect is sleek and slim-fitting, but allows for plenty of easy movement — I can see why it was intended to be worn for playing golf or other sports with lots of upper-body movement.

Speaking of those Fair Isle fronts, though… a closer read-through of the pattern revealed that they are not supposed to be knit in stranded Fair Isle technique. You are supposed to knit them in plain stripes and them embroider the motifs on later using Swiss darning aka duplicate stitch! I was truly flabbergasted to see that, as I had assumed the 1920s interest in stranded knitting designs extended to stranded knitting technique. Not so — in fact, as I learned, many other “Fair Isle” designs of the time were also produced via duplicate stitch embroidery.

I like embroidery on knitwear in moderation, but all the motifs on both fronts of the entire jacket was too much for my liking. I experimented with different techniques on the first couple of stripes — should I strand all three strands across the whole row (bulky and the dark colours show through the white background)? Not strand at all, but make each motif in intarsia using separate short lengths of wool (so many ends to weave in)? Strand the colour for one set of motifs across the row and embroider the other (worst of both worlds?) Interestingly, making all the motifs in intarsia technique and weaving in the ends turned out to be the least amount of effort, so that was my choice.

The sleeve cap construction was fascinating. Because the back is done entirely in ribbing and the front in flat colourwork, the front and back pieces have a naturally different shape above the armhole even though the bind-offs and decreases are symmetrical. The sleeve cap accounts for this by casting off three stitches every other row on the front-facing sleeve side and one on the back sleeve side. That made a very lopsided sleeve cap which fit perfectly into the lopsided armhole. Wow. I would never have thought of designing a sleeve cap like that, but it makes perfect sense and produces a very neat, squared-off shoulder.

For a final surprise, the pockets are not knitted, as I am familiar with from 1950s and 1960s pocketed garments, but made of “some strong fabric” and sewn in. Thinking along with the sportswear theme, that makes sense if you are going to put a heavy golf ball in your pocket — a knitted pocket would sag under the weight, but the woven fabric (I used a bit of cotton-poly ex-pillowcase from the upcycling drawer) keeps its shape nicely. The pockets were made extra large by request and it was surprisingly difficult to sew them in place, but they turned out fine.

And that was that! The story, by the way, was “The Involuntary Vamp” by Mildred K. Barbour, published in 1921 in the Washington Herald, and concerns itself with the adventures of young Diana Langley, who was “cursed” by her aunt Marjorie with the “gift” of “lure” — all the men are after her, but the only one she really wants (Stephen Dale, an older friend of the family) cannot marry her, as insanity runs in his family. So she marries another man out of spite, jumps off her honeymoon train in the southwestern U.S. desert with a different man, gets semi-kidnapped by yet another man, gets away and finds sanctuary with yet another man (and his sister) who we later find out is responsible for the whole hereditary insanity situation… or non-situation, as it turns out (did I mention that the plots of these stories are often ridiculous, but thoroughly entertaining?) and then has more adventures before being united with Stephen Dale, who is actually quite mentally healthy and was in love with her the whole time. Diana’s first-husband-out-of-spite has meanwhile conveniently died, leaving the happy couple free to marry!

The Stephen Dale in the story is quite rich (of course), has a yacht and participates in all the usual 1920s upper-class sports, so here is my “Stephen Dale” wearing his all-purpose sport cardigan to play a round of croquet on a lovely leisurely Sunday afternoon:

There are such nice details in the cardigan, from the turned-up ribbed sleeves to the neat pocket flaps. The buttons are real mother-of-pearl, vintage buttons from the 1920s.

And with that, they boated off into the tropical sunset! May all your adventures have such a happy ending.