Knitting

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Learn How to Add a Vintage Touch to Your Knit Wardrobe

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vintage design workshop

Ane is the winner.

Lots of knitters love to use vintage knitting patterns or to work from patterns that are inspired by the patterns of the past. Vintage patterns tend to have less ease and more details and shaping than many of the patterns of today, and they can be really fun to knit but are not without challenges.

The patterns of the past didn’t include the level of detailed instructions you will find today, to the point that it can even be difficult to find compatible yarn or to understand what size of garment the original pattern would make.

Vintage Design Workshop is an amazingly detailed and inspiring book for vintage knit fashion lovers. Geraldine Warner takes you through all the steps to understand and work from vintage patterns, from where to find patterns to how to choose yarn, adjusting width, length, armholes and sleeves, necklines and stitch patterns.

All that would be plenty, but there’s also a trove of information on adjusting modern patterns to have a more vintage feel, from adding shaping and changing sleeves to adding shoulder pads, buttons and Fair Isle motifs, to name just a few.

A full dictionary of patterns for sleeves, collars, necklines, pleats, pockets, cuffs, trims and edgings makes it possible to modify any pattern to have a vintage feel.

I should mention there are no full garment patterns in this book, so you need to be comfortable with adjusting patterns and/or writing your own to get the most out of this book.

Sound interesting? I’m giving away my copy this week, so leave a comment on this post before the end of the day Sunday, July 30, if you’d like a chance to win it. I’d love to know what you like about vintage patterns or if you’ve ever knit from a vintage pattern before. There’s a project in my colorwork book, the slip stitch tweed top, that feels vintage to me in style, color and pattern, but it’s not strictly vintage.

Thanks for visiting, commenting and sharing, and good luck!

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Comments

  1. Many of my patterns date from the fifties to the seventies so probably are considered vintage! I return to them again and again, especially baby cardigans as I like their style better than modern patterns.

  2. I’ve knit from Seventies patterns, but would love to adapt some from earlier. This book looks helpful!

  3. I looove vintage style! One of my favourite things to knit and wear are shrugs, which also seem to be quite a usual pattern to find in vintage pattern books 😀

  4. I love vintage it gives me a timeless look and fine yarns to use, I like to use natural yarns and want wear from the time I take creating, I’m not looking at throwaway fashion. Many vintage patterns are more like dressmaking in the way darts and seams are used in structure allowing you to be forgiving to areas and highlight others. Couture at my price.

  5. I haven’t knit from vintage patterns. I like the style, so would love to try some.

Have you read?

Embellish Your Knit Dishcloth with Flowers

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift. 

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style. 

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills. 

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather. 

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do. 

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall. 

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills. 

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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