photos – The Stitchcraft Sixties

EDIT July 28, 2026: Finished! (and PHOTOS!!)

Summer is here! And the June 1968 issue of Stitchcraft has a glorious design to “sun yourself by the pool or on the sand”, “this season’s smartest beach look — the hand knit bikini set.”

The caption at the top of the page promises you can “Go Sunning and… Lazing”, but does not say anything about “swimming”. I can imagine why! Though have heard that the one-piece knitted swimsuits of the 1930s and 1940s didn’t stretch all too much when wet, I cannot imagine that this 1960s bikini with garter-stitch bands would cling to the body effectively in water. Nothing like having your bathing suit float off of your body on a wave to make that day at the beach truly memorable… I have a modern bathing suit for actual swimming (which I don’t do much of for fun anyway), and I try to avoid direct sunlight when possible, but I can definitely see myself “lazing” in the shade on a pool chair in a hand-knit bikini, so this was my project for June.

The three sizes for the top are for 32-33, 34-35, or 36-37 inch bust. I made the third size. Like me, the model seems to have at most a B cup. I imagine this style of hand-knit swimwear wouldn’t work very well for anyone built much bigger than that, since it doesn’t give much support and and more weight would make the bands stretch too much.

Finding the right yarn was a challenge. The original wool is Patons “Four Seasons”, a sport-weight mix of wool and synthetic fibres with a bobbly, “popcorn” texture, in “Surf Blue” colour. I found exactly one brand of yarn with the right weight and look and it is perfect — Popcorn by Lana Grossa — but it is also 100% cotton, so possibly even less appropriate for swimming than the original. It’s also probably a bit heavier, which was OK with me if it gives a thicker and less see-through fabric. It was also available in bright pink! If I was going to knit myself a bikini from 1968, I wanted it to be as bright and fun as possible, so that was perfect.

The top is knitted in stocking-stitch, from the band up to the straps, with garter-stitch borders. I was unsure of the suitability of garter stitch for a bra band, as it is just going to stretch horizontally, but ribbing was impractical for the rest of the borders (which need to lie neatly flat) and combining the two didn’t appeal to me. I knit an elastic thread along with the yarn on 3,5 mm needles, which made the band surprisingly firm and gave it some elasticity. If necessary, the band could be reinforced with a narrow strip of elastic. There’s a vertical band of 12 stitches garter stitch in the middle of the front.

The cups are formed by increasing at the middle of each one, then decreasing rapidly at the same stitch. This makes them kind of pointy, in the old “bullet bra” style. But after finishing the cup shaping, I tried it on and it fit! I reinforced the straps with the same extra elastic thread. For the back fastening, I tried using a bra closure, but it didn’t look good with the overlap and was unecessarily difficult to fasten. I decided to use clear plastic snaps instead.

The briefs were fairly simple in design and nicely shaped. You start with a narrow strip of fabric with narrow garter-stitch borders for the crotch part, then cast on for the front leg part with a garter-stitch border and increase to the hip seam. At this point, it looked like an anatomical model of a uterus with fallopian tubes… Then I started the back piece, which is made similarly but of course less cut-out at the legs, then knit from the hip join up to the waist in one piece in the round. I meant to make a fake “side seam” with a purl stitch, or even a couple stitches’ worth of ribbing on both sides to make it cling better to the body, but I forgot.

My first try came out too wide and looked saggy, so I ripped back and tried again one size smaller (once again forgetting the fake side seam / side ribbing option.) That worked much better. There are some short rows at the top of the back part to make it more round, which were possibly not necessary in my case, but which I made anyway. The waist is reinforced with a strip of elastic band, which is supposed to be held inside the garter-stitch border with herringbone stitch “to make a casing.” I did not like that idea, so I made a hem casing using pink sock wool in 1×1 ribbing. That did add a bit of bulk, but made the briefs fit quite well with no sagging. (At first I thought I didn’t have enough of the pink wool and had to finished the hem in white. Then I found more of the pink wool and ripped back again to finish it in pink. There was a lot more ripping back and re-knitting than there should have been.) Then it was done! Top and bttom both fit well and didn’t change size with blocking (hand-wash, dry flat with a short stint in the dryer on delicate cycle.)

Of course, the best part of this project was taking photos! I was lucky enough to participate in a week of art courses with my wonderful friend Sabine Mehlem, who was taking the portrait photography course (I stuck to drawing and sculpting.) She took the most amazing photos in some classic “pin-up girl” poses as well as perfectly re-creating the original photo from the magazine:

In case you can’t tell (haha), the first photo is the original; the other two are by Sabine. The photography teacher brought a detail to our attention that we hadn’t noticed: the model in the original photo has a thread tying the bikini tom and bottom together! I guess the top either rode up too much or the bottom sagged. We didn’t have that problem — our only challenge was taking a midriff-baring photo right after lunch during a week in which we were all extremely well and deliciously fed.

(Also, you wouldn’t believe how painful these 1960s poses are! The model looks so relaxed, but her hip is going one way, her shoulder another, her head a different way entirely and to top it off, her arm is twisted up and backwards. And she is definitely leaning against a wall in a studio, not lying on a beach lounge chair as the photo would like to suggest.)

Here are some more photos! We really had fun. I guess I could have used that thread in the fourth photo after all…

This was one of my favourite projects ever. I am an indoor cat and don’t generally so any “sunning” (can you tell?) but I could be persuaded to do so if I could look like this while doing it. May all your projects be so glamourous, and have fun sunning and lazing! I know I will.

Original magazine photo (uncredited) from Stitchcraft, June 1968. Posed photos © Sabine Mehlem, 2026. Used with permission.

I have finally finished the magnificent cardigan dress from September 1967!

Captioned “Fashion Switch” along with the waistcoat-and-miniskirt set in the cover photo, the dress was written to be knit in Patons Double Knitting in the colour “Burnt Orange” 5020. I had already had great results (“Front Panel Classic Sweater” from 1964 and the inspired-by-Stitchcraft fingerless gloves from December 1966) with G-B Jil wool in the perfect shade of orange, so the choice of yarn was easy.

I am a bit sceptical when it comes to A-line dresses, since the often look too sack-like on me — I need dresses to be shaped or belted or nipped in at the waist in some way. The pattern has four sizes, to fit 33-34 up to 39-40 inch bust. I got perfect tension with 3.5 mm needles on the other projects with this wool, so I made the third size, for 37-38 inch bust and figured I could always adjust by continuing the A-line skirt decreases and/or adding extra stitches before the underarm shaping.

I made the sleeves first to check for size and tension. That had the extra advantage of not having to make the sleeves after finishing the entire body of the dress and procrastinating. I made them in the round and other than the wrists being a little tight, they were fine. I also made the body in one piece with fake side “seams” (1 extra p stitch) including the button bands. Of course, the bands should have been knit a little shorter than the garment and on a smaller-size needle. I was happy to ignore that rule this time, because if there was one thing I did not want to do, it was to knit and sew on extra vertical-rib button bands on a 34 inch long dress. Also, the skirt decreases were placed every 16 rows, which was conveniently about 2 inches apart — the exact spacing of the buttonholes. For once in my knitting career, all the buttonholes were evenly spaced!

It started off very slowly, because the skirt is wide at the hem, and I was worried that I might not have enough yarn, since the first 100 or 150 grams got knitted away very quickly. It slowed down with the decreases, though (8 stitches decreased every 16 rows in “princess seam” style, 2 rows of decreases the the right and left of the center line on both front and back.) For a slightly more nipped-in waist, I continued the decreases 1 more time and then, after a couple of inches straight, increased on the side “seams” until the stitch count was back up to the 3rd size.

It was hard to try on while knitting, since the front edges curled a lot before blocking and buttoning. I found some incredible and very 1960s looking buttons, but there were not enough of them at the shop and they couldn’t be re-ordered. Bummer! The cover model seems to have those plain, clear plastic buttons that one otherwise uses to close a duvet clover. I found similar plain buttons in a surprsingly good matching burnt orange shade, and there were exactly 18 of them in stock (17 for the dress and one extra.)

The G-B Jil wool washes really well in the machine and can be dried in the dryer. It’s superwash, so I knew it would stretch bit when washed and could either be dried flat to keep it slightly larger, or dried in the machine to shrink it down a bit. I knit and blocked the pockets separately and sewed them on after everything was dry and flat, to get a good placement. The pattern said to place them 4.5 inches up from the bottom hem, which seemed too low to me… and also seems lower than in the pattern photo. If it annoys me, I can always remove them and sew them on a little higher — the advantage of patch pockets.

The dress fit quite well after being dried flat. The only problem was that the neckline was a bit too high and the last button pressed against the front of my throat annoyingly. Looking back at the magazine photo, I see the Stitchcraft model had the same problem! I adopted the same solution: leave the top button unbuttoned.

We had a great photo session at our Monday knit night and even got a perfect 60s-esque colour-block background.