A blast from the (very distant) past

Although I'm left-handed, and cut out, pin, sew, unpick, and iron that way, I knit right-handed. From a discussion with other knitters a few weeks ago, I've discovered that this isn't uncommon. Partly it's a practical thing: patterns are written to be knitted right-handed, and doing otherwise means endless fiddling with details such as shaping instructions and cable twist directions. But for most right-knitting lefties, me included, it's simply the case that we were taught by a right-hander.

Experiment in progress

Although I only started knitting seriously in 2023, I learned the basics over 50 years ago, at primary school. The conversation about handedness reminded me of something I had long forgotten, that I confused my teacher by producing perfect stocking stitch when we had only been taught garter stitch. The reason being that I hadn't twigged that I should swap my needles over at the end of the row; I simply knitted from left needle to right needle, and then back again.

I was told that this was wrong, and duly stopped doing it. But thinking about it now - no need to do purl rows, yay - I rather wished that I hadn't. So of course, I wondered if I could pick it up again.

My first attempt was to knit one row normally, and then back following the instructions for left-handed knitting in what is, indeed, my knitting bible.

My first port of call for any knitting questions

Including knitting left-handed

This approach didn't work. Of course, the assumption is that having completed the row, the knitter will swap the needles over and do a left-handed purl row. So for me, the stitches were the wrong way round on the needle and I had to knit into the back of the loop. But more to the point, I couldn't get on with holding the yarn in my left hand.

Next, I tried photographing each stage of the knit stitch, and flipping them to the mirror image.

From this . . .

. . . to this

That didn't work either, for much the same reasons.

Eventually, after a lot of trial and error, I hit upon a method which seemed to fix all my issues.

The four steps of forming a right-to-left stitch

To check how it compared to knit-and-purl knitting, I cast on 30 stitches, and knitted a sample where on purl rows I slipped the first stitch, purled four, knitted 20 by my right-to-left method, and then purled the final five. There was no obvious change in the purl rows.

The end result looks the same

I'm sure that this is an established knitting method somewhere, but I've never come across it. Next, I want to check how/if it affects my tension, and experiment with using it for stitches such as yo, k2tog and ssk.

Finally, one other consequence of my being taught to knit at (Scottish) school rather than by my (English) mother is that I knit in the lever style. It's a fairly niche skill where I now live, so on my summer trip up to Edinburgh I was delighted to see this picture by photographer and community worker Sandra George in an exhibition of her work.

Someone knitting the way I do!

Family ties

A scurry (yes, that is the collective noun)

Regular readers of this blog (thank you) will know that the choice of animal in the picture above can mean only one thing; I'm considering a new project.

Actually, it's not entirely new. The cylindrical things are lace bobbins, and I used to make bobbin lace.

The bobbins in full

It was a long time ago, well before I started the blog. My lace has only appeared on here once, when I used some pieces which I had made years before to trim my Armistice Blouse.

The lace was made specifically to fit the blouse pieces

Close-up of the lace in situ

Because it was so long ago, I don't have any pictures of me making lace or work in progress, so I'm using a book cover to show what is involved. A very simple explanation is that thread is wound around the bobbins, which are then passed over and under each other to weave or plait the threads to form the lace.

Lacemaking in progress

Bobbins were traditionally made from wood or bone. They can be plain, but also carved, turned, or painted. The beads at the bottom provide weight to tension the thread, and also stop the bobbins from rolling on the pillow - the working surface. They are usually used in pairs.

A selection of my bobbins, from different makers

Mum also made lace for many years; in fact, I can't remember which one of us started it first. We had a lot of hobbies in common, and regularly swapped supplies and other items as we each needed them. She gave me her bobbins years ago, when arthritis started to make lacemaking too difficult for her, but I must admit that they just sat in the box she stored them in. Then this week, on a whim, I took out both her bobbins and mine. So many memories came back - of swapping notes and patterns, and of going to lace fairs together and buying the bobbins.

From talking to friends after Mum died I've become aware that not all of them have/had good relationships with their mothers, and some have been very strained indeed. I was so lucky that not only did we get on well, but we had so many shared interests which brought us even closer. Which is why, despite not being short of things to do, I'm considering taking up lacemaking again. With my own bobbins and with Mum's.

Creating

Only a very short post this week. I am busy trying to finish Butterick 7729 before the end of the month, and haven't taken enough pictures along the way to write both an in-progress and a completed post. Taking the time to properly draft a bodice front with a full bust adjustment greatly improved the fit of the second mock-up, and rotating the armscye slightly inwards had the double benefit of making the shoulder seam the correct length and also absorbing the excess fullness from the sleeve head. I had to remove some length from the bodice once it had the weight of an attached skirt to pull it down, but I'm pleased with the final fit.

Still needs buttons and other details

(Please excuse the mismatched belt. I've ordered a covered belt, but it hasn't arrive yet, so instead I used the belt I had made by the same firm for my Rosalind dress - also a mid-1950s Butterick pattern.)

The most important part of this project isn't going to be the completed dress, however. When I started it in mid-August I wrote that "I need to be making something to maintain my sanity", and that has definitely been the case. It's been a tough couple of months. My mum, who is in her nineties, fell at the end of July and was in hospital for a month - and very poorly for some of that time. She is home now, but unable to resume her old routines so has carers coming in. There has been - and still is - a lot to set up, and as her only relative, I've been doing it all. (A friend who is in a similar situation memorably summed it up as "Being an only child is not the problem, it's being an only middle-aged adult that you really need to worry about"!)

Amid all this, sewing a dress, even (or perhaps, especially) one which has taken a lot of work, has provided welcome respite. I'm a natural worrier, but many times I have found that tasks such as drafting pattern pieces, marking darts accurately, or constructing a collar with the correct turn of cloth have absorbed me so completely that my brain has had a rest from the hamster wheel of doom that I can get stuck on. There's just something about making, that steady progress through a series of steps, that acts as a reset. And I'm very grateful to have it.

How we got here

Last week when I was out shopping with my mum, we bumped into one of her neighbours, who commented (favourably) on how I was dressed. I was surprised at first because I was just dressed 'normally' for me, but eventually realised that a 1948 dress and seamed stockings is not most people's first choice for doing the weekly supermarket shop in a small market town in Shropshire!

The dress in question - Vogue 2787

Then yesterday I was helping a friend with costumes for a photoshoot, and he asked me how I got into vintage.

I was wearing this, Vogue 5215, when he asked

And all this got me thinking, how did all this happen? I was in my teens when the late-1970s 1940s revival arrived and, while I loved the styles, I wore and made contemporary versions rather than seeking out original pieces. I did start to wear true vintage as a student, but it was more 1950s styles. Then once I started work in an office, in a very male-dominated industry, the clothing I made was very much of its time. This continued to be case for over two decades, and when I started this blog in 2012 my dressmaking was all contemporary, historical, or dance-related.

Looking through the blog for clues, I think that the change may have started when I visited the Off The Peg exhibition about Horrockses in autumn 2012. This inspired me to draft and make a 1950s dress for a Christmas night out, I started to seek out patterns at vintage fairs - and I was off!

The exhibition poster

My first attempt at a 1950s dress

Personal events in 2013 limited my vintage sewing to two Vogue reissues: 8686, which was an abject failure; and my first version of 2787, which after a few initial tweaks is still going strong.

Bad and good

The next year saw me draft and make my first CC41 dress. Looking back, I can only wonder at my decision to abandon commercial designs and launch into pattern drafting at a time of such stress, but I do recall that losing myself in the work involved did give me a temporary respite from the grief.

CC41 dress, a useful distraction

Judging from the blog, 2015 appears to have been the year when my vintage sewing really took off, aided and abetted by the Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge. Vintage sewing became popular in general, with lots of pattern reissues to choose from. Then of course, in 2020 there wasn't a lot to do but stay at home and sew.

2020 dresses

However, all of this really only explains how I acquired my vintage wardrobe, and not really why. I've been thinking about this all day, and have come to the conclusion that it's largely due to aging. I was 50 when I was widowed and made the CC41 dress. I'm aware that as a middle-aged woman I am largely invisible in society and, like many others, I've chosen to embrace this and wear whatever the heck I want. Which in my case, is the forties and fifties styles which I loved in my youth. Plus, vintage styles are another way of stepping off the fashion treadmill and making clothes which can be worn and worn. I'm lucky in that being able to sew gives me so much choice in how I dress, and I'm happy to take full advantage of it.

Progress?

(In which I have another rant about Modern Life.)

I need to replace my phone. It has been glitching from time to time and apparently this is because, at all of three-and-a-bit years old, it cannot handle the latest technology used in various updates. I'm also going to have to do something about my Windows 10 laptop this year, although at least I've had that for eight years.

Not in need of an upgrade any time soon

As someone who makes most of her own clothes on a 92-year-old sewing machine which is still going strong and for which I can get spares, I am unimpressed, but not surprised, by all this. We live in a world where built-in obsolescence is king, and hang the consequences. I do appreciate that I am not comparing like for like - my sewing machine is purely mechanical and therefore far less complex than something which relies on software. But I still think that lessons could be learned from the way Singer attempted to keep older machines up to date, rather than just encourage/expect their owners to upgrade to a newer model.

The starting point seems to have been the idea that a Singer machine was an investment which was expected to last a long time, and to be passed down through generations (as happened with my mum's machine, which is now mine). So when electric machines became the norm, Singer devised a motor and light which could be attached to a hand crank or treadle model, using fixings which were already part of the machine.

The sewing machine as heirloom . . .

. . . and how to bring it up to date

Similarly, various attachments were designed which allowed a straight stitch machine to do fancier sewing by moving the fabric from side to side.

Attachments for my Singer machines

I already have a buttonhole attachment from, I think, the 1950s, but recently acquired an older version. It's in a cardboard box rather than a 'modern' plastic case, and uses wingnuts rather than plastic dials to make adjustments to width etc, but underneath the cosmetic improvements it's the same.

My older buttonholer

The attachments were made with the same longevity in mind as the machines, with anti-corrosion paper pasted into the box.

It clearly worked, as the buttonholer is rust-free

The 'zigzagger' is mechanically similar to the buttonholer, in terms of the way it moves the fabric. It comes with four different cams, which produce the various style of zigzag illustrated on the box lid.

Wonderful artwork

The zigzagger, with one of the cams inserted

The stitch design is on the cam

Singer also produced further sets of cams for the zigzagger and yes, I am keeping an eye out for them!

The final attachment which I have is the hemstitcher. It is by all accounts quite tricky to use.

Unlike the other two, it doesn't have a casing

It's also the only one of the three which still has its instruction leaflet, but all of these are available online.

The hemstitcher could also be used to produce a picot edging.

From the instructions

My mum can remember picot edging being offered as a service by the local Singer shop, for anyone who didn't want to try it themselves. The effect looked like this.

Picot edging on a frill

Seen from a modern economic perspective, Singer's determination to keep older machines usable rather than sell new ones seems bizarre. Presumably it came from a strong belief in the quality of their original product. Of course, ultimately none of this did Singer any good. They were slow to adapt to the changing market, and eventually folded. (The Singer of today is a different company from the original.) But I'm glad to have at least one piece of equipment in my life which I can expect to last for years to come.

It's been a while . . .

Since I posted about older women and sewing. Time to recify that.

I always enjoy reading Susan Young's excellent blog, but her latest post is particularly interesting. As some readers may know, Sue is involved with SewOver50, an online group which was initially set up to challenge the invisibility of older women in the online sewing world. Four years later, the group is thriving, both online with the @SewOver 50 Instagram account and in real life with meetups, but Sue asks the question - has representation of older sewists by pattern companies actually changed in this time?

The answers are mixed. Some brands have definitely made the effort to be more age-inclusive in the images they use. Others, however, have a firmly 'youthful' aesthetic and are sticking to it - despite being happy to use the expertise of older sewists in pattern testing, their websites don't include any pictures of these aged and therefore off-brand testers wearing their creations!

Most of the comments, both on Sue's blogpost and the SewOver50 IG post are about modern Big4 and indie patterns (although The Vogue Woman patterns from the 1990s do get an honourable mention), so mean very little to me, but seen from a vintage point of view, it does seem as though things are actually getting worse.

I've posted before about half-size patterns. They were designed for the older figure: shorter, and with a lower bust point and wider waist than standard patterns. I had a few half-size patterns at the time I wrote the post, but have since acquired more. My oldest one dates from 1946, but most of them are from the 1960s and 1970s. The concept of half sizes doesn't seem to have lasted into the 1980s and, among the Big4 at least, Misses sizing now reigns supreme.

Simplicity 1749, 1946

Simplicity 4489, 1953

I assume that the sizing information section in pattern books provided an explanation of how half-sizes differed from other patterns, because there is usually no information on the pattern envelopes themselves. Butterick 9765 uses the familiar trope of grey hair with a youthful face to indicate an older wearer, but then so does Butterick 9796, which is a Misses size.

Butterick 9765 and 9796, both 1961

Simplicity's 'Slenderette' line ran for several years, and included both half-size and Miss patterns. The illustrations don't show any obvious difference in body shape.

Simplicity 3758 and 3789, both 1960

Half-size patterns may have been intended for more mature figures, but that didn't always mean more conservative styles.

Short skirts in 1968, Simplicity 7696

By 1970 Simplicity were describing half-sizes on the pattern envelope as being for shorter women. Only by comparing the standard measurements with those of a Miss pattern does the more generous waist fitting become apparent.

Simplicity 8890 and 9003, both 1970

Standard body measurements on 8890 (top) and 9003

Style seems to have taken a different approach. The earliest half-size Style pattern I have dates from 1972. (Obviously, this doesn't prove that there were no half-size patterns any earlier, but I have a number of 1950s and 1960s Style patterns, and none of them are half sizes.) Before expanding into half-sizes, Style did appear to show older women on the pattern envelopes more often than other brands. This was not achieved by drawing older faces, but instead with more mature figures.

Different ages on Style patterns

When Style did finally expand into half sizes, the older women vanished from the envelope artwork.

Style 3675, 1972

I don't have any Vogue half-size patterns, but what I have acquired since 2019 are the remaining 1975 issues of Vogue Patterns. For several issues in 1975 and early 1976 Vogue Patterns ran a feature called "The Clothes You've Always Wanted . . . In Your Size". The same design was offered as two separate patterns, one in standard sizes and one in half sizes. When I first posted about this, I didn’t have the Spring, Summer, and Early Autumn 1975 issues, but now I do. There is nothing in the Summer issue, but the other two follow the example of Early Spring issue by showing the clothes on an older model. Scandalous, I know.

Vogue Patterns, Spring 1975

The second (and final) double-page spread of the feature

Early Autumn 1975

Older women looking stylish - who knew?

And longer hair as well - shocking!

It's depressing to think that almost 50 years we are struggling to get even that level of representation of older women. But on the other hand, it's been done before (and clearly didn't drive Vogue patterns into bankruptcy!) so can be done again.

Making do

I'm in a bit of a sewing slump at present, I just don't feel like doing any stitching. This hasn't stopped me from buying the odd pattern which interests me, however.

Style 4457

I can't say that I have a pressing need to make a bedjacket, but what caught my eye was this.

Really?

If you were particularly lacking in imagination, there's this helpful illustration to help you along.

Multiple fabrics in use

The same drawing is frugally re-used in the pattern instructions.

At least this suggests day frocks could be used

It's the use of the plural, frocks, that really gets me - with the implication of having a selection of old evening dresses lying around to choose from. Especially as Style, while not one of the cheapest pattern brands, was certainly not up there with Vogue, either.

There's also the small matter of fabric. The suggested fabrics include 'quilted materials'.

Quilted fabric seems to be the preferred choice

However, unless the writer was inspired by this, that seems an unlikely choice for an evening frock.

Vogue cover, possibly 1938

The reference on the pattern envelope to the Civilian Clothing (Restrictions) Orders dates it to 1942 at the earliest, by which time coal was in short supply and a bedjacket needed to be a warm garment. The days of it being a flimsy thing in luxurious fabric for lounging around in a well-heated bedroom were long over.

The questionable value of a bedjacket made from silk satin just adds to the questions I've long had about the Make Do and Mend campaign. I have a copy of the original Board of Trade leaflet from 1943.

Laundry, repairs, re-use, and prevention

There are some useful tips but much of the information in there, such as turning sheets, was already second nature to most housewives. Long before the war, both my grandmothers always did this when sheets became thin in the centre - splitting them lengthways and sewing them back together with the sides in the middle (although I'm told that turned sheets were never used on guest beds!). Both of their husbands were in regular, secure, reasonably well-paid employment, but still the idea of getting less than the maximum use out of something was unthinkable. The fact that the leaflet feels the need to state, not once but twice, that stockings should never be ironed, suggests that women like my grandmothers were not the target audience.

A more likely audience appears in a book I've just read, House-Bound by Winifred Peck. Written in 1942 and set in Edinburgh (here called Castleburgh) in the same year, it opens with Rose, the upper-middle class wife of a city lawyer, attempting to find new domestic staff to replace the two who are about to leave for jobs in a munitions factory. With "girls streaming away from service into the Services" this proves impossible, and Rose resolves to run her home herself, despite having no housekeeping experience whatsoever.

Rose's domestic education is only part of the story, and is limited to cooking and cleaning. From a passing reference to a laundry book, I assume that she sent her washing out. However, it's not hard to imagine that a woman who wondered if soap should be used when washing potatoes would be equally clueless about whether or not to iron stockings.

Lady Peck, as she was by the time of House-Bound's publication, was from a similar background to Rose. I don't know if she shared her heroine's domestic cluelessness, but she certainly would have known many women who did. It seems to me that it was these women, suddenly having to cope without live-in staff and to make things last rather than replace them at the first sign of wear, who were the real targets of Make Do and Mend. Certainly, they were more likely to have "cast-off evening frocks" than any of the women in my family. I would love to know if anyone did actually make bedjackets from such unsuitable materials, or if suggestions like this mainly existed to normalise the idea of 'making do' among women who previously had no experience of anything like it.