April 1968: Overview

Cables, zigzags, and dogs, oh my! April 1968 is going to be a fun month at Stitchcraft.

The “country knits” on the cover are in just two sizes, “for her” (34-36 inch bust) and “for him” (38-40 inch bust.) I imagine the style would look good on a larger woman as well. The raglan seams are sewn together after front, back and sleeves are knit separately. The cables continue onto the collar, which folds inward.There’s also a “travel coat” with mock-cable twists in “Super-Sonic” style (multiple strands of bulky wool knit together on maxi-size 3/4-inch needles) and a smooth and elegant cardigan with just a few cables on front and sleeves.

Texture without cables can be achieved using Patons nubbly “Four Seasons” yarn for a tweedy dress (love that wig again), a plain jumper with frilly edgings, or a ribbed “classic blouse in larger sizes”.

The three summer tops in the centrefold photo also use textured rib patterns for a cable-like effect. All three are in different weights: the sleeveless top on the left looks lightweight but is make in bulky “Big Ben” wool; the fluffy blouse in the middle is made in soft, fine angora-wool “Princess”, and the “practical wash-tub summer sweater” on the right is made in Bri-Nylon “Brilliante”.

There are some nice cable and zigzag designs for men and children as well: Besides the cover pullover, there’s a traditional Aran-patterned sweater with cables and zigzags, a textured cardigan-and-skirt set for a little girl, and a boys’ jumper with a similar zigzag pattern to the men’s Aran sweater.

With so many great knitting projects, it’s no surprise that the homewares are mostly basic. There’s a pretty hedgerow-flower embroidery motif that can dress up a cosy, a tablecloth, a cushion, and/or an apron. The apron has a wide horizontal strip of embroidered fabric that’s divided by seams to make multiple pockets — very practical.

You can also crochet a quick baby blanket to use as a cover in the cot or pram, or a set of chair protectors with a flowery lace motif. Churchgoers can make a tapestry kneeler in “stained glass” effect for Easter, provided they work fast — Easter Sunday 1968 was on April 14th. The colours — two shades of blue, lemon yellow, red and gold — were probably quite pretty.

Plus, dogs! Besides the real live dog posing in the photos with the male model for that “country” effect, there are four projects for dog lovers: a cross-stitch rug with a corgi on it, a setter embroidered on a cushion cover, a cross-stitch dachshund for a book or “Radio Times” cover, or a tapestry dalmatian to hang on your wall. All of the pattern were included on one transfer, and all could be adapted to any medium (rug, tapestry or cross-stitch on Bincarette), so dog fans could go wild decorating their country homes.

The Readers Pages feature a reprint of the “Sunshine Cushion” from June 1966, which I made in July 2024. It’s a great pattern and deserved to be reprinted! In the children’s comic, white cat Pearl and black cat Inky meet and become friends.

That’s all for this issue! I like the cover cables and the Princess top, but I’m working on other projects that I would like to finish, so I’ll probably embroider the hedgerow flowers onto a vegetable bag. Or maybe unravel a half-finished cardigan that I’m unhappy with and turn it into the long-line cable cardigan.

March 1968: Bold and Bright

There were some nice knitting designs in the March 1968 issue of Stitchcraft as well as a very 1960s “bold and bright” embroidery/appliqué design. Captioned “The Modern Look for Embroidery”, it featured flower motifs in a sort of, I don’t know the word — cartoon style? The opposite of delicate and ornate. You could embroider them onto a cushion or appliqué them onto a coffee cosy. I have more cushions than sofas and do not need a coffee cosy, but a new laptop case would be useful and pretty.

In keeping with the spirit of upcycling / using up scraps before buying new products, I decided to make the embroidered version, since I had some wool embroidery thread in the appropriate colours (gold, orange, white and two shades of green) left over from other projects. I had lots of appliqué felt too, but not the right colour scheme. Still had plenty of denim from an upcycled pair of jeans (original would have been yellow furnishing linen), lining fabric from the fabric drawer and quilt interlining for padding. All I needed to buy was a spool of thread and a zipper.

Als always, I would have had to send away for the transfer in 1968, but there was a helpful schematic in the magazine which I transfered over to paper and then onto the denim, sizing it up to fit. Transfering the design to the denim was hard, even with a white tracing pencil. I had to go over it with chalk and then of course keep going over it again and again because the chalk wiped off during the embroidery. One of these days I will try using solvent paper.

The embroidery itself was not hard, but lots and lots of buttonhole stitch over a large area. I had two kinds of embroidery wool and one kind (the two shades of gold and the white) was very fine and thin. There would have been no way to make a proper buttonhole stitch where the threads like right next to each other. So it came out somewhere between buttonhole and blanket stitch.

The hardest part, as always, was setting in the zipper. I try not to use profanity on this blog, so I will just say that I was greatly frustrated. Also, why am I utterly incapable of cutting or sewing a straight line? It is a rectangle…. it is not difficult… I measured constantly in all directions … I have one of those quilting mats with measuring lines on it… I don’t know what my problem is. In the end, I just sewed the zipper in by hand, which was far neater and easier than doing it on the machine. I tacked the lining on by hand as well.

When it was finally finished and I had successfully managed to not throw either the project or my sewing machine out of the window, I realised two things: 1) in spite of the deep frustration and the hours (yes, plural) spent trying to get the zipper in, the upper edge (zipper edge, of course) was totally crooked and 2) the motif was actually meant to be repeated smaller and multiple times across the fabric, not just once and big. No wonder the buttonhole stitch was so hard to do correctly… Yes, there is a photo of both cushion and cosy in the magazine. No, it somehow didn’t dawn on me in spite of consulting the pattern frequently. No, I don’t know what my problem is.

In spite of that, it’s…. not bad? I mean, functionally it’s fine. My laptop fits in it perfectly, the zipper works (hallelujah), the padding is a good thickness, and denim is a good, tough, washable fabric for laptop cases. The design is indeed bold and bright, and quite cheerful. The crooked edge annoys me, but I could re-do it. Still, somehow I feel this project is not quite right. Maybe I will fix the crooked edge and try to sell it? Give it as a gift to someone with the same size laptop? Keep it and let it grow on me? We’ll see.

February 1968: Fine and Lacy Adaptation

The February 1968 issue of Stitchcraft didn’t have any projects in it that immediately called to me, but a good friend had requested a pink headband for keeping her ears warm without wearing an entire hat, so decided to make an adaptation.

I first tried the two-colour pattern from the amazing cardigan set on the inside back cover. It’s made using a combination of stranded two-colour knitting and twisted stitches and makes a great trellis-like effect. It needs to be made in two colours to actually have an effect, though, so I switched to the fern-y lace pattern on the panel of the jumper on the front cover.

I had a decent amount of pink Drops Fabel sock wool left over from the April 1967 chevron-pattern dress, which was coincidentally almost the same shade as the Stitchcraft jumper. The pattern is made using standard knit and purl, k2tog / k3 tog, and yarn overs. The pattern repeat is 16 stitches + 1, worked on a stocking-stitch background i.e. the even-numbered rows are mostly purl. I added 6 stitches of garter stitch and a selvedge stitch on each side of the panel to get a good width and avoid curl. The pattern was surprisingly boring to knit! I didn’t even bother to make a chart, just used the written instructions straight out of the magazine.

I started and ended with a bit of plain garter stitch, increasing up to the total number of stitches to make the headband a bit narrower at the nape-of neck and create an elastic band effect to keep it snug. I wasn’t sure how big to make it — I have a big head and very flat hair, my friend has a presumably average-site head and very fluffy curly hair. After blocking, it ended up a little loose on me. If it’s too loose, I can always undo some of the garter stitch connecting bit on the underside.

It looks pretty and I like the pattern a lot, but I’m not sure if fingering-weight sock yarn was the best choice for a headband that should keep the ears warm. I’m afraid it won’t be warm enough. in which case, I could line it with fleece?

Not 100% happy with this project, but hopefully my friend will be.

June 1967: Daisy Motif Peg Bag

My project from the June 1967 issue of Stitchcraft was a “peg bag” adorned with simple embroidery.

“What is a peg bag?”, some of those who dry their laundry on a rack indoors or in an electric dryer may ask. As you can probably tell from the photo, it is a bag to hold laundry pegs a.k.a. clothespins so that they are close at hand while you are hanging up your clean laundry on a line to dry. The design from this issue had a folded-over top into which you insert a wooden coat hanger to hang it up while you work, as well as a matching apron for maximum laundry-hanging style which I didn’t make this time, but will keep in mind for later.

The base fabric is supposed to be orange or gold coloured — I used leftover dark grey from last month’s “crab” cushion. It is supposed to be lined with gingham — I used leftover green fine corduroy from last month’s “fish” cushion. The only thing I had to buy was more embroidery thread — I had enough white and black, but not enough yellow or green.

Not having a transfer as usual, I just drew the daisy on a piece of paper freehand and copied it onto the fabric with carbon transfer paper. For the chevron-and-loop-stitch borders, I drew two parallel lines with V’s in between for the chevrons. The embroidery was not quite as simple as the design would lead you to believe. The white outlines of the daisies are done in couching stitch — laying down a thread and tacking it down with tiny stitches along its length. Easy in theory, but tricky in practice. In retropsect, I could have glued down the outline threads with water-soluble glue before couching them, to make them stay in place better. (Do any of you do this?)

The yellow centers are also couched, or actually woven — you put down slightly loose satin stitches in one direction and weave cross-threads through in the other direction. It gives a marvelous texture, but I was working with 6 strands and the cross-threads were prone to either split or skip over the ones they were supposed to be weaving through. The outline around the centers is black chain-stitch and the leaves and stems are satin and chain-stitch — except that I didn’t read carefully enough and did the stems in stem stitch. Also, I think two different shades of green got mixed up in my green thread stash? But it gives a nice subtle shading effect. The borders are chevron stitch with loop stitches.

The difficult part of this project was the construction, particularly the lining. I had to rip out the top-pocket seam more than once and re-position it to make all the right and wrong sides come out correctly. When I finally got it right, the lining did not stay in perfectly smoothly, but i will live with it. Also, the corduroy-ish fabric is not really a good lining choice, as it picks up every tiny bit of fuzz floating around while also producing its own. The colour is good, though!

I inserted an old-fashioned wooden coat hanger and noticed that the lining “caught” on one side, so did some more adjustments until it fit better. Voilà. It looks better in real life — the camera makes weird shadow patterns. My only complaint, besides my inability to sew straight lines, is that the finished bag is quite big — how many pegs / pins are you really going to put in it? But it can also be useful for hanging in the hallway / coat rack area to hold gloves, accessories, cat toys or whatever.

I have both an electric dryer and a drying rack, but no outside space to hang up laundry, so I will give this bag to someone who has a garden with a clothesline. The intended recipient also wears hats and fingerless gloves and has two cats, so the bag will find a use in any case.

Not the most exciting project I have ever made, but fun, cute and useful.

June 1967: Overview

“Knit for the SUN” is the theme of the June 1967 issue of Stitchcraft, and our cover model gives us the best example of that in her striped and sunny yellow outfit.

“Stripes and Colour” show up in different ways in this issue, combined with stitch patterns and stranded colourwork for novelty and texture. The pullover on the cover has normal stocking-stitch stripes on the front and back and a novel mini-cable pattern on the sleeves which mixes the four-row colour repetition with a two-stitch cable every four stitches on every fourth row, alternating left- and right- leaning cables for a zigzag effect. Another short-sleeved pullover has striped ribbing, but a plain body and sleeves. The “feathery lace” dress has vertical stripes implied by the ribbed lace pattern combined with plain horizontal colour stripes that look scalloped due to the stitch pattern. Love those sunglasses, too! And a sleeveless shell uses a slip-stitch pattern to make stripes with toothy ridges.

Fun stripes show up on the children’s garments too. There are shirts for boys with the same striped ribbing and collar, plain body and sleeves idea as the women’s top, and a dress for older girls with a stripe of colourwork flowers at the hem. “Junior” girls can “splash and paddle” (i.e. not really swim effectively) in a supposedly stretch-proof knitted bikini in vertical stripe stranded work — the strands should keep it from stretching too much horizontally in the water, but I’m not sure I’m convinced. The top is just two rectangles sewn together.

Stripes can be vertical or zig-zagged as well — either worked in colour as with the top on the cover, or in monochromatic stitch patterns. There are his-n-hers pullovers “knit to match” in a pattern similar to the sleeves on the cover design, but worked with 2-stitch twists instead of mini-cables, and a sleeveless polo in “Shetland mood” with a cable pattern on the front. (The caption says, “Janet sports her own jaunty beret, but Booklet 9775 is an easy one to knit — details on page 37.”) The two remaining garment designs, a cardigan and a blazer, have neither stripes nor zig-zags, but continue the theme of fun stitch patterns and this month’s trending colour of bright sky blue.

Homewares dive deeply into the Jacobean era, with an amazing wall panel that integrates complicated, historically-inspired stitch work and floral designs with a bold and oversized 60s aesthetic. Not Jacobean-inspired, but equally colourful and exotic, is the cross-stitch tropical bird. You can work it on a cushion or use it to cover a cake tin (appropriately, the name of the background colour is Biscuit.) For a real historical flair, you can make a cross-stitch wall panel adapted from a brass rubbing of Sir John Harsick, anno 1384, in Southacre, Norfolk. According to Stitchcraft, embroidery in the style of a brass rubbing “has become very popular over the last few years.” Interesting!

For an easier project, you can embroider sea-horses on a beach bag and matching deck-chair cushion (love the little aspirational illustration.) Or you can sew up a practical, and also cute and sunny, laundry-peg bag and matching apron and embroider them with big, cheerful daisies — “quick and gay to work on kitchen linens or for a bazaar.”

The Readers Pages reprint a striped knitted rug from the September 1964 issue, and the single full-page ad gives us another example of brilliant, yet meaningless, 1960s advertising copywriting and exceptionally 1960s colour combinations: the “Sunflower” Orlon-nylon jersey ensembles is available in olive/cyclamen, olive/burnt orange, midnight/avocado or burgundy/cherry. (A midnight avocado with olives, cherry and a nice Burgundy doesn’t sound half bad, if you took care not to burn the orange.)

I am tempted to make the brass-rubbing embroidery just for the weirdness of it, but realistically, my project will be the daisy-embroidered peg bag and apron. Have a sunny June!

March Excursion: Snow Daisies

Welcome to Spring! Is it snowing where you live? The March 1967 issue of Stitchcraft had some nice designs, but nothing that was fast, easy or practical enough for my knitting life at the moment, so for this month’s post I’ll write about a cardigan I finished in mid-February: the Snow Daisies cardigan from the Spool Cotton Company’s issue No. 189: “Women’s Sweaters: America at Work and Play” from 1942. The booklet with all the patterns is available for free here.

The “Snow Daisies” cardigan is touted as a “heavy cardigan for outdoors”. Knitted somewhat oversized (esp. for 1940s sweater standards) in thick wool, it has “plenty of room for a sweater underneath.” What you don’t see in the magazine photo is the fact that not only the sleeves, but also the back is made in 2×2 ribbing. This was an excellent design feature on many “sport” garments from the first half of the 20th century, allowing for generous movement without extra fabric to flop around and get in the way of your golf swing or ski poles or whatever. The front is made in reverse stocking-stitch with an open cable on each side, and decorated with embroidered daisy flowers. It’s a nod to all the “Bavarian”, “Tyrolean”, “Alpine” etc. traditional southern German and Austrian styles, though of course an American pattern from 1942 doesn’t use those words as I imagine they did not want the association.

I made my version in Hjertegarn New Life, a very interesting recycled wool — if I understood correctly, it’s reclaimed from older knitted items. Mine was 65% recycled wool and 35% recycled “other” fibres (synthetic, I guess?). It felt like strong, nice wool, tough but not too scratchy.

My tension was a little larger than the pattern and I wanted the cardigan to not fit too loosely, so I adjusted the stitch counts. The sleeves were fine, though the ribbing didn’t pull in as much as I thought it should. I guess that comes from wool that is only 2/3 actual wool and 1/3 mysterious “other”? So I made the back even narrower than I had calculated. It was too narrow. I made extra panels on the sides to make up for it. On the front, I placed the cables slightly differently to couter-balance having fewer stitches. I forgot to do one extra cable twist in the center twist part, but if you can’t see it in the photo, I won’t tell you where it is. The daisies were easy to embroider on.

I was not so happy with the final result. The overall look is quite square — the ribbed shoulders add bulk in an area where I am plenty wide enough. Worse, the ribbing just doesn’t pull in at all — it expands horizontally, especially after washing and with wearing, as ribbing is not supposed to do. I took out the extra side panels, which helped a little. I’m just not happy with the wool, though. It’s too bulky and not springy enough. Also, the button band is “wavy”, though I think that might be a design feature, since it looks like that in the photo, too?

(Not having any winter sports gear, here I am posing with a croquet mallet and ball…)

I’ll see what I can do with it, but I might end up giving it away.

October 1966: Jacobean Embroidery

EDIT November 19, 2024: Finished!

My October 2024 project was an embroidered panel in “Jacobean” style from the October 1966 issue of Stitchcraft.

Real Jacobean embroidery was an elaborate, mostly floral style of wool-on-linen work that was popular in the early 17th century. It featured heavy, filled stitches and complicated couching, often in multiple colours and with a high level of skill and artistic virtuosity. The style enjoyed a revival in the mid-20th century, and many home embroideresses made Jacobean-inspired designs to decorate home furnishings such as cushions and wall panels.

This finished panel is intended to be used as a chair-back and / or sofa-back, with the sofa-back incorporating the panel twice. Chair-backs and sofa-backs were a popular way to extend the life of upholstered furniture by keeping it clean and protected from sun damage. You don’t see them much nowadays, except in the casual form of throwing a blanket or quilt over the sofa back to hide faded or worn spots. I could actually use a sofa-back, since my sofa sits under a window and the sun does fade the dye quite a bit over time, but my sofa is already so cluttered with hand-made cushions. I decided to make the panel first and then decide if it should become a cushion, laptop case, decorative wall panel or other use.

The pattern is written for wool embroidery on furnishing linen. I had no trouble finding an appropriate background fabric — although mine is thick cotton muslin, not linen — but fine embroidery wool is difficult to find. I know one store in Paris and a Ravelry friend just let me know about another (also in France.) I could have ordered from either one of them, but I happened to be in a store that sold mending wool in a variety of colours, and decided to give that a try instead. The colours in the pattern were light green, green, dark green, peacock, dark peacock, rust and light rust, which I found with an extra alternative-light-blue and slightly-more-blue-green for variety. It worked well!

The most difficult and time-consuming part of all these vintage embroidery patterns, as always, was getting the design onto the fabric. Back in the Stitchcraft days, you had to send away for the iron-on transfer by post. These days, old transfers occasionally pop up for sale on ebay, but of course not exactly the one I want to work on right at that moment, so I have to recreate them myself. I do it the old-fashioned way, by drawing a grid over whatever photo or schematic is in the magazine, then drawing a proportional grid over a piece of paper in the correct size, and enlarging by copying square for square. Then I go over it with marking pen, and transfer it to the fabric via “lightbox” (i.e. taping it to a window) or dressmakers’ carbon paper. I used carbon paper for this one.

I’m sure there are computer programs that could do all of that a lot faster, but then I would have to take the time to learn the computer programs… and I like keeping the handwork aspect of the craft alive.

The embroidery itself was not nearly as difficult as I had expected, considering that the design looks very complicated. It’s really just lots of satin, buttonhole and stem stitch. The fancy couched parts were a lot easier to do than the buttonhole areas, in my opinion! They are worked by laying down threads in crossing diagonal lines and tacking them at the corners, then working French knots or tiny crosses in the squares.

It went quickly and although it is was not quite done by the end of October, I did get the embroidery finished at the beginning of November. The I was traveling for work and didn’t get a chance to make it up into anything without my sewing machine.

In the end, I decided to make it into a cushion — simple and period-appropriate. I made a separate cushion for inside the embroidered cover to make washing easier and fastened it with a button flap this time instead of a zipper this time. That was it!

The finished size is about 18 x 11.5 inches (47 x 29 cm), which corresponds to the width of the original chair-back design. It’s perfect, and since I don’t have space for more cushions and like making people happy, I arranged to give it to a friend.

August 1966: Flower Design Veggie Bag

Lovely sparkling colours of simple flower heads, show up beautifully on dark linen. Just a circular cluster of the flowers look very effective on a cushion or workbag.

My August 1966 / August 2024 project was this fun and easy embroidery design featuring a flower whose name, at least, was unfamiliar to me: the tongue-twisting Mesembryanthemum. The name encompasses an entire genus of plants, native to southern Africa, of which some species are succulents and others more “flowery” types. The species that inspired the embroidery is presumably M. crystallinum, aka “iceplant”, which I have encountered without knowing what it was called. Now I know!

The pattern is for a cushion or workbag, and the flowers are meant to be worked in wool embroidery on black linen. I have too many cushions and workbags already, so I adapted the design to make another little bag to buy and transport unpackaged fruits and vegetables from the farmers’ market, organic supermarkt, etc. (Here’s an overview of previous embroidered bag projects.) I bought a bunch of old money bags at an antique sale a while ago, which I upcycle and decorate for this purpose.

The flattish flowers with slender petals translate well to easy embroidery — the flowers are all worked in straight stitches, with French knot centres, and the little leaf details are loop stitches. I used scraps of cotton floss instead of wool, since the bag will be used and washed frequently. N.B. the tangled mess in the box of embroidery thread is not my doing! I inherited a big handful of embroidery cotton scraps from someone downsizing their elderly relative’s home. It proved very useful for this project, as I was able to match the colours from the pattern (white, maize, orange, mauve, violet, light pink, light magenta, magenta, spice pink, and plum, plus olive for the leaves) fairly accurately without having to buy anything new. Also, “spice pink” is listed in the materials section, but not included anywhere in the instructions. The colours in the photo are not accurate, either — what looks like sky blue and light turquoise is actually navy blue (my version of “violet”) and white.

The positions and colours of the individual flowers are given on a separate page in the magazine, which was practical as of course I didn’t have (or would have been able to use) a transfer. I had to adapt it anyway to fit the rectangular bag, but kept to the schematic as well as possible. Looking back, I could have balanced it out better by making the second flower from the bottom on the left side purple or orangey-pink instead of white, but whatever. I used my approximation of “plum” plus a sort of brick orange and medium brown for the French knot centres, using up the colours I only had little bits of. I finished off the bag with a button — always nice to find a use for that interesting, but singular button from the 10-cent random button bowl.

And that’s it! This was the perfect upcycling project — I made something useful and sustainable from 100% re-used and/or vintage materials. I love using these bags and can’t wait to show this new one to the cashier at the organic supermarket who always takes a second to admire them. I should make the next one for her.

June 1966: Overview

Colour for High Summer! The trending colour in Stitchcraft’s June 1966 issue is turquoise, and “High Summer” means casual, easy knitwear in washable synthetic yarns for holiday travel. Let’s dive in!

The knitted fashions are high-necked but loose-sleeved, knitted mostly without shaping in textured stitch patterns. Our cover cardigan is made in turquoise “Courtelle” synthetic wool with a pattern made by increasing and decreasing in the same stitch to create a sort of flattened bobble over multiple rows. There’s a white pullover with a bold intarsia turquoise flower, a his-and-hers white cabled rib for seafaring holidays, or sporty numbers for playing tennis in a dress shirt and tie. The colourwork pullover is also made in turquoise and white, and the sleeveless men’s tennis top in blue.

For warmer days, there’s a heavy-knit, but sleeveless and lacy, “jaunty beach top”, or a choice of two pretty T-shirt tops. The basketweave-patterned top is also blue, and the diamond-patterned top in “Banana Cream” beige — the colour trends are very clear. The last two tops are made in finer, 3- or 4-ply wool, but also make use of synthetic yarns like the wool-nylon “Nylox” three-ply used for the basketweave top. You can complete the outfit with one of two crocheted hats: pillbox style or with a corded brim, both in heavy “Capstan” wool.

Children can enjoy their holiday in a striped play-shirt with matching “overpull” or a bobbled cardigan and pleated skirt (though the skirt, like so many fashions for little girls, is quite impractical for any kind of actual playtime.) The cardigan features an interesting two-colour pattern made by dropping a yellow stitch down three rows and picking it back up together with three white loops. Interestingly, the children’s patterns feature neither turquoise nor blue of any kind, but are made in bright yellow and white or more subdued stripes of grey and light red.

Homewares are fun and easy, starting with a knitted “World Cup Willie” car rug. The 1966 FIFA World Cup football (soccer) tournament was held in England in July 1966, and “World Cup Willie” was its official mascot. England won the trophy that year, beating West Germany in the final match 4-2, so I guess Willie was indeed a bringer of good luck. Personally, I am much more interested in the Stitchcraft model’s dress, hat and shoes than Willie or the World Cup — I want that entire outfit! The rug is made in heavy “Big Ben” wool and a sturdy moss-stitch pattern, with the “Willie” motifs worked in intarsia technique from a chart included in the magazine issue.

Moving on, there’s an embroidered wall panel to commemorate the 900th (plus a year) anniversary of the consecration of Westminster Abbey — we haven’t had a commemorative wall panel for a while, so that’s a nice plus. As always, there are chair-accessories and cushions, this time with delicate embroidered satin-stitch poppies in wool on linen, or a very 1960s happy smiling sun worked in felt on Hessian/burlap fabric for tough use in the garden.

You can also make a beach bag from towelling material gathered with “Rufflette” curtain tape, or sew an easy sundress for a small child — basically a big rectangle of fabric gathered and sewn at the shoulders — and embroider a lucky fish on the pocket. Speaking of lucky fish, how about this masterpiece of 1960s advertising copywriting that accompanies a photo of a woman “caught” in a fish net? It’s all happening at your local Scotch Wool Shop.

That’s all for high summer! My project will be the sunny garden cushion, and possibly also the basketweave top.

May 1966: Cushion For the Nursery

My May 1966/May 2024 project was based on an adaptable project “for the nursery” featuring cute little animals and flowers. The pattern as offered in the magazine could be used to make either a wall hanging in felt appliqué, or a cushion in wool embroidery. I chose to use elements of both designs and made a cushion in felt appliqué.

As always, the transfer was not included in the magazine — readers had to send 1/10d to Stitchcraft and received the transfer post free by mail. Obviously, that would not work now, as Stitchcraft is no longer published. Happily, the animal and flower shapes are quite easy to copy and individual illustrations of the dog, bunny and mouse are printed in the magazine.

Both the appliquéd animals in the wall hanging and the embroidered outlines on the cushion are intended to be made with non-realistic colours (the rabbits are blue and magenta, the donkey gold, the cat jade green, the dachshund magenta, and the mouse bright pink). I chose more realistic colours based on what I had in my felt-scrap stash, and I like cats, so I made two grey cats looking at each other over their shoulders. I had enough purple, magenta and yellow felt left over from the last appliqué cushion I made to make the flowers. I made the cushion cover itself in a natural-coloured linen, as intended in the pattern, and the inner cushion in leftover white and beige fabric from other projects.

The appliqué work was quite easy and pleasant, even the tiny leaves of the flowers. The flower stems are embroidered in stem-stitch. I was nervous about making the cat’s eyes (white felt embroidered in black) as the expressions can be very tricky, but I think they turned out quite nicely. Since I was on the road for most of this project and didn’t always have access to my sewing machine, I put in the zipper by hand, which worked out fine.

And there it was! I love making cushions and would make more of them if I knew what to do with them after they were done. I have more cushions than space already for myself, and this particular design, although extremely cute, is a bit childish even for my playful decorating style. Luckily, I have friends with small children, and this cushion will go to one of them, who is currently decorating her three-year-old’s room. I hope he likes it! I am certainly quite happy with my happy cat cushion and I think he will be too.

April 1966: Knitted Lamb

My Stitchcraft project from the April 1966 issue was actually a reprint from the March 1957 issue: a knitted lamb as an “Easter gift for a toddler.” Knit a little lamb for your knitting friend who is about to have a baby, they said. It will be fun and cute and use up leftover bits of wool, they said…

My first clue should have been the fact that there is no accompanying photo of the finished lamb in the 1966 issue. Either the original issue didn’t have a photograph (I don’t have the 1957 issue in my collection) or they just didn’t reprint it along with the pattern, since the latter version only has a drawn illustration. Why would the editors not want to show a lovely photograph of the lovely finished knitted lamb? Why indeed?

I admit the next step was “my fault”. Since the pattern called for 4-ply yarn held single, and I mostly had fluffy DK-or-thicker alpaca left over from the tot’s coat in February, I chose to adjust the stitch counts for a stitch-per-inch gauge and try to make the lamb turn out the same size as in the pattern. I did the math correctly, but I suspect something may have been off in the row gauge . The pattern starts with the legs and the main body (top part) in multiple pieces (1/2 each of back and front leg) and involves a complicated series of increases and decreases for the shaping. The “corner” on the back legs seemed odd to me, but I know I followed the pattern. Surely it will all come out right when sewn together, I told myself. After all, I successfully grafted the top back “spine” instead of sewing it! Obviously I was good at this! And it did pretty much look like a sheep’s pelt when laid out flat.

The next piece in sequence is the under-body, which is almost the same as the top, just shorter/narrower. I sewed it to the main body as instructed and stuffed it well, as instructed. The back legs were longer than the front ones, and what was with those weird “hocks” now? Shouldn’t they be sort of… attached to the rear end of the animal instead of just hanging off into space?

No matter, I made hooves. I guess the hooves were fine. Then the head, which was made in three parts: two sides and the “head gusset” for the “chin” and neck. I sewed them together as instructed, and it looked like Frankenstein’s lamb. The head was … not as round as in the illustration, and the neck strangely proportioned. Had I done the math wrong? Was it supposed to fit onto the opening of main and under-body? It didn’t really, but I persevered.

Eyes. The lamb needed to have eyes, as well as a symbolic nose and mouth. This was the part I had been dreading. Ever since I tried to knit some decorative stuffed birds that ended up looking sad, psychotic and/or dead (see photo), I have been afraid to embroider eyes on a toy. The eyes in the illustration look like the lamb is rolling its eyes in high annoyance (at all the knitters who fail at embroidering faces, no doubt.) Not wanting to even attempt that, I had the brilliant idea to make “closed” eyes. Just a little upside-down “u” and a smiling mouth! Hurrah, it worked! Little Lamb is so happy not to have been eaten for Easter supper!

Side note, marijuana was legalised in Germany on Easter Monday, one day after I finished this lamb. Perhaps the lamb was celebrating early. In any case, it’s really, really happy.

At this point I was torn between giving up entirely or just seeing it through. Oh, and I had also run out of the alpaca yarn, so when I decided to just roll with it and finish the project, I switched to some mystery something that was also sort of off-white for the ears and tail. The ears looked nothing like the ears in the illustration, but I was getting used to that by now.

I sewed all the bits together and strangely, the head stayed up by itself. And the lamb could almost stand on its own, depending on what position you bent it into and how widely the legs were splayed out. (I do feel like that’s kind of accurate as to how real lambs look when they learn to walk, says the person who has never lived anywhere near the countryside or raised sheep.) The lamb’s “necklace” as given in the pattern was a complicated bit of braiding, knotting and embroidery, to which I said “nope” and made a little green collar with an easy yellow flower instead. (Thank you, Frankie Brown, for writing and publishing a great pattern for the flower. I donated to the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation and can promise you that I am not going to try to sell this lamb!) Luckily, the collar conveniently hid the awkward seams at the neck. Otherwise I would have had to go full Frankenstein and put in some screw-bolts.

And there it was! Behold the finished lamb, in all his / her / its glory. It is so wonky. The more you look at it, the more weirdness you see. But also, the more you look at it, the happier you feel. I love this lamb so much and challenge all of you to look at it and not feel happy with me. I almost want to keep it for myself instead of giving it to the baby… Maybe it can stay with me just a little while longer?

May all your imperfect projects bring you such joy.

July 1965: “Pansies” Garden Cushion

This month’s project was an appliquéd and embroidered cushion. Or, as the description in the magazine put it:

Attractive appliqué cushions in hardwearing hessian add a gay touch for garden lounging — ideal for deckchair comfort or to use on the lawn. Children will love them too, and they are tough enough to stand up to the rough-and-tumble of garden play.

Two cushion designs are given, one with autumn leaves and one with pink and purple pansies. I chose the pansies, which were bright and fun and very 1960s. As luck would have it, I had exactly the right amount of pink and purple felt in stash, and almost enough green embroidery thread for the stems and leaves, so I didn’t have to buy many materials and could use the project to de-stash. I did have to buy the backing fabric, and decided on a tough decorating/upholstery cotton instead of real Hessian fabric (aka burlap, jute, gunny-sack), since I don’t think this cushion will be subjected to any “rough-and-tumble of garden play” on my friend’s balcony.

Since I didn’t have a transfer, I made a little paper pattern for the felt petals, estimating the size based on the amount of felt and the size of the background fabric. One modern “standard size” piece of decorating felt made exactly 18 petals and I think it came very close to whatever size the original transfer pattern was. I overlapped the leaves in a sort of pinwheel layer (following the helpful illustration), using a little bit of stick glue to help keep them in place, and then secured them with pins. For placement, I simply folded the background fabric in quarters and used the fold lines for the two middle axes, then measured evenly from there for the corner flowers.

I sewed the flowers down with matching thread and added the yellow centres. The diagram shows them a bit above or below the actual centre of the petals, but I like symmetry, so I made the yellow pieces more round and put them right on the centre. (The layers of felt weren’t too heavy.)

All that was left to do after that was the leaf and stem embroidery, which was done in easy stem-stitch in green thread. The pattern didn’t say how many strands of thread to use, but seeing as it was a bold design, I used all six threads together and ran out of thread. (Up until this point, I had done all of the work in one day, but alas, I had to pause because it was Saturday late afternoon and the shops wouldn’t open again until Monday.)

Monday came, I bought more thread and finished the surface of the cushion. Sewing it up was easy enough. I had enough muslin in stash to make up one half of the inner cushion pad (pro tip: the inner cushion should always be a little bit larger than the outer cover, to prevent sagging) and enough of the beige cotton to make the other half. I did not, as suggested in the pattern, line the pad with plastic to make it waterproof “for use on the grass”. After making the pad, I had exactly enough beige fabric left to make strips for “piping”, so added that as well (not part of the original design). It was not “real” piping, which is made on a bias strip, and thus came out a bit uneven. Oh well. At least the zipper was no problem this time.

And that was that! I stuffed the inner cushion with fluff, sewed it up, zipped it into the cover and voilà. I have no garden, no balcony and too many cushions already, so this will be a gift for a friend.

May 1965: Primroses and Violets

For this month’s project, I couldn’t decide whether to make the pretty 3-colour “Shaded Blouse” (knowing that I have plenty of knitted tops, and that I would have to buy yarn for it when I am trying hard to reduce my stash) or adapt the tablecloth/dressing-table set embroidery pattern for another vegetable bag (quick, easy, useful, environmentally friendly and reduces the stash of embroidery thread and yet-unembroidered bags). Spoiler: I made both, so the stash balance will remain even. The top will take a little while, so here’s the veggie bag in the meantime.

The pattern is a design of yellow primroses and purple violets, but not in the same “bouquet” — there’s an option for a tablecloth with the primrose sprays in the corners and the smaller, individual violets scattered across the middle surface, or a “cheval set” for your dressing table with one large mat (2 primrose sprays and 2 violets) and two small mats (one violet each.) I chose to just make the primrose spray.

The bag is one of several that I bought at an antique sale a few years ago for a euro each. They are literally old moneybags, formerly used to transport money to and from the German national bank (hence the “Deutsche Bundesbank” and date printed on it; this bag was apparently from January 1997.) After 2002, the German Bundesbank replaced the old bags with newer and better ones (better in the sense that they presumably fulfilled new security regulations for the Euro) and you can now buy the disused old bags at antique markets, via ebay, etc. How they got from the bank to there, I do not know, but would love to find out. (If you are an expert in the sale and trade of disused moneybags, please share your wisdom in the comments — I genuinely would like to know.)

Anyway, apart from the fascinating can of worms that is their origin story, the bags are the absolute best for buying vegetables at the grocery store, farmers’ market etc, being made of a very thick linen (?) fabric and just the right size for small amounts of things like mushrooms, green beans, shallots, etc. Because they are both tough and easily washable (of course I washed them thoroughly before starting to use them for food items — money is literally filthy) they are particularly good for sandy or earthy vegetables like the aforementioned mushrooms, new potatoes, or the kind of carrots that I like to eat, which are grown in peat and therefore quite “dirty” (but taste better than regular carrots).

The actual embroidery pattern was not difficult. Of course, I had no transfer, since I would have had to order it in the mail in 1965. But it was no problem to sketch out the flower spray from the photo. I used transfer paper to transfer the design onto the fabric. The ink was quite faint, so I went over it with a ball-point pen (washable), which worked well enough. There were instructions in the magazine and even a helpful close-up of the stitches, which were all extremely easy: satin stitch for the petals, blanket stitch for the leaf outlines and stem stitch for everything else. I ran out of light yellow after embroidering half of the flowers, and the new skein I bought was one colour-shade different. You can tell if you look closely, but I don’t think it’s a flaw — it gives the flowers a little more depth.

This is the third “Bundesbank” bag that I’ve embroidered, as well as another bag of regular cotton fabric. I used the other bags to buy stuff at the local organic supermarket last week and the cashier stopped in the middle of my checkout to say, “I’m sorry, I just need to take a second to admire this beautiful work.” That was sweet! If I ever get enough of these made, I’ll probably start selling them.

Stay tuned for the “shaded blouse”!

March 1965: Flower Border Bag

Choosing a project from the March 1965 issue of Stitchcraft was an interesting process. I loved both of the children’s designs (a “continental” cardigan and a textured pullover with a round stranded yoke), but could find no takers among the children / parents of children that size that I knew. I loved the red cardigan in the cover photo, but didn’t feel like going through the work of re-sizing and re-proportioning it for myself and it wasn’t the right style for any knit-worthy men in my life. None of the bulky, large, unshaped garments in the issue would have suited me. Also, I had multiple “endless” WIPs that I wanted to finish and other projects that have been waiting in the queue for a long time. So — I made a little embroidery project.

The project as presented in the magazine is a flower border in simple stitches and a limited colour palette (all blue, all “peacock”, or green and orange), to be worked either on a cushion, as a border on a pillowcase, or on satin fabric for a door panel. Not needing any of those things, I embraced the spirit of versatility and made a little embroidered and zippered bag that can be used for spare knitting needles / accessories or any other kind of easy-to-categorise-but-hard-to-contain “stuff”. I have many of these bags around the house, some made by me and some by friends. They are particularly useful for organising things in drawers or travel luggage. You can never have enough… and yet I kind of do! Luckily, they also make great little presents for friends, and one of mine has a birthday coming up, so I made it for her.

Of course, I don’t have the embroidery transfer from the magazine — readers had to send away for them back in the day. The flower is quite simple, however, and I was able to just copy it onto a piece of paper freehand. I had some nice bright turquoise linen left over from this cushion, some dove-grey viscose for lining left over from whatever, and embroidery floss in several shades of orange left over from this cushion as well as brown, so all I had to buy was a skein of green floss and a zipper. I transferred the pattern to the fabric by taping it up on the window and tracing with a marker pen and was good to go.

The embroidery is done entirely in satin, stem and blanket stitches — really fast and easy. I finished it in one afternoon, washed it out by hand under the tap to get rid of the marker lines and let it dry overnight. The next day, I made it up into a bag and voilà, finished.

It measures about 24×17 cm or 9.5×6 inches, a practical size, and the design works well. I could have chosen a more vibrant green for the leaves, but the subtlety of the leaves and stems makes the bright orange flower pop even more, and I think the smaller orange buds balance it out nicely. I am also very proud of my zipper-setting skills. All in all, I think this was a great example of how vintage designs can be adapted to fit modern needs and make homeware items that are both useful and attractive.

January 1965: Overview

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s 2023 in the present day and 1965 here at the Stitchcraft Sixties.

We are now solidly in the mid-60s fashion era of miniskirts, Twiggy and the “Space Age” look, but Stitchcraft was a conservative magazine, so hemlines are still at least knee length and the “country casual” look prevails. To be fair, it’s also January, so the focus is on practical, warm garments for both outdoors and in (good central heating was still not available in many British homes) and homeware projects to keep hands busy during the long, dark winter evenings.

The January 1965 issue was photographed in Lavenham, a medieval town noted for its timber-frame houses and its connection to the wool industry in the 16th century — a fitting setting for knitting magazine photos! Our model poses for the cover in “A corner of Lavenham’s delightful town square” whose entryway arch perfectly matches her bright blue sweater-dress (I don’t know if the poodle is hers or just happened to stop by for the photo) and for the inside photo in front of the historic St. Peter and St. Paul Church, whose construction was financed primarily by merchants in the wool and cloth business.

Other warm “sweater” garments for adults include a shirt-style pullover for women and a smocked-cable pullover for men in shades of gold and brown, a tweed cardigan in larger sizes (up to 43 inch bust), a crocheted skirt suit, and a “senior pullover” for “Father’s Classic Look”. All of them are in DK-weight or heavier wool. With the exception of the cover dress and the larger-sizes cardigan, both made in bright blue, tweedy, marled colours of brown, gold, copper and olive green prevail. Photographic fashion favours strong, straight-standing poses for the “bold” look, often with the camera held at a diagonal angle.

Winter means warm, quickly knit accessories as well, and this issue has some fun hats and mittens with Norwegian or blocky stripe patterns (the one with the broken lines is done by saddle-stitching embroidery on the finished cap.) No harvest golds and burnished coppers here: the caps are all made in red and white or royal blue and white for a typical wintery snowflake look. The cosy bedjacket is also blue and white and features a soft, squishy slipped-stitch lace pattern that is presumably very warm and comfortable.

Younger children can wear a truly cosy “snug suit for winter playtime”: a set of pullover and “helmet”-style cap in a thick slipped-stitch pattern with knitted leggings. Blue and white or red and white are the colour choices here as well. There’s also a pullover for “Junior” (three sizes to fit 24-29 inch chest) in light blue and dark blue. The “crunchy” stitch pattern looks complicated, but is made entirely using normal knit and purl stitches in a combination of stocking-stitch, reverse stocking-stitch and small bobbles made by knitting, purling, knitting into the same stitch on one row and purling 3 together three rows later.

There are plenty of homeware projects as well: like the knitted items, everything except the lace doily is more serviceable than fancy. There are stitched and crocheted rugs– and a conveniently placed advertisement for rugmaking which is one of the very few advertisements of this era that show a man working on handcrafts.

There’s a butterfly design in cutwork or as wool embroidery on a cushion in mid-60s shades of brown and dark green as well as more cushions in Tudor blackwork design or a geometric “peasant” pattern. The latter two take up the “bold” colour scheme idea with black on bright red or royal blue, scarlet, gold and jade on natural fabric. Finally, there are three flower panels than can be worked individually or combined to decorate a folding 3-part screen.

That’s this issue! My project will be the Norwegian cap and mitts in trending 1965 colours of blue and white. Happy New Year to you all.

September 1964: “Peasant” Embroidery

Photo of am embroidered cushion and tablecloth, from Stitchcraft magazine, September 1964

This month’s project — finished just on time! — was another embroidered cushion, larger and more ambitious than the previous ones I have made.

The cushion cover measures roughly 15×21 inches or almost 40×80 centimetres and features a highly stylised flower design in bold colours in the style of traditional Hungarian or Romanian designs. It is… interesting to note that Stitchcraft used very different appellations for traditional embroidery designs depending on the country or region they came from or which style they emulated. Typical Nordic designs were called “Scandinavian” or used the specific country name. Designs based on Indian, Persian, Chinese or Japanese works or styles usually used those country names. But anything related to a Southern or Eastern European tradition — Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia (one country at that time), Yugoslavia (country name at the time), Greece, etc. was a “peasant” design, with or without a specific country name. I’m sure it wasn’t meant in an insulting way (also pretty sure that most of Stitchcraft’s readers were descended from “peasants” if you go back far enough), but the word doesn’t quite sit right when you think about it in context; there is an unconscious bias at play, unfortunately typical for the time but worth noticing and pointing out when discussing vintage magazines now.

The design, in any case, is beautiful, and is given in two versions, for a cushion or a tablecloth border. As always, the biggest challenge is re-creating the transfer, which Stitchcraft readers at the time had to order separately. There is a colour photo, and helpfully, also a schematic diagram that is presumably exactly the same as the transfer, just smaller.

If the cushion were smaller, I might have been able to scan the diagram into the computer, adjust it to the correct size and print it out, then copy it onto the fabric with carbon transfer paper. Or even use the special embroidery printer paper that you can stick onto the fabric and wash off when the embroidery is done. But the design is much bigger than any paper my printer can print. I suppose I could have taken it to the print-and-copy shop, but I chose to enlarge the design the old-fashioned way, by drawing a grid over the diagram and the paper and copying it by hand. It’s a good exercise, and one I can certainly use more practice in. I transferred it with carbon paper and went over it with water-soluble pen. For the border flower circles, I marked the positions and just traced around a button.

My fabric was a fairly heavy furnishing linen in exactly the same colour as the original. The pattern is written for wool embroidery thread, which I would have had to order from the one little shop in Paris that sells it. It’s a wonderful shop, but I wanted to get the project started, so I just went with regular cotton crewel thread. The colours are Black, Peacock, Red, Rust, Dk Orange, Lt Orange, Gold, Yellow, Lime, and Cream. I used the photo and my own taste as a guide to all the shades of orange and yellow. My “Lime”, like the “Lime” in the photo, was more like a slightly greenish lemon, but it looked good (and probably accurately reflected the colour of any real limes available in England in 1964…) On working the embroidery, I noticed that the directions say “White” instead of “Cream”, but I was glad I had used the off-white — I think real white would have been too strong a contrast.

The stitches are all quite basic: stem, satin, buttonhole and blanket with some French knots and one use of Romanian stitch in the middle of the red and black flower. It was good practice for buttonhole stitch and French knots, which were my nemeses before, but have improved significantly due to this project.

I realised while working it that the individual motifs weren’t quite big enough — in the original, they are much closer together, almost touching. There was no way I was going to re-do the entire transfer and start over, so I accepted it.

The work went surprisingly quickly, considering how large the cushion is. I made it up into a cover with the same fabric as a backing and a zipper close. A standard 40×80 cm bed pillow fits in it well. Though my embroidery skills are still a work in progress, I am very happy with the final result.

When I started this project, I had no plans for it after finishing — I have more cushions than couch/chair space, so I assumed I would give it away as a present or sell it. Happily, a colleague noticed me working on it during a break and loved it, saying it was the perfect colour for her sofa and the walls in the living room, and she offered to buy it! So it will have a good home and I earned a bit of money for the craft budget. Perfect.