Showing posts with label knitting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label knitting. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

The Vintage Baby: a New Addition and a Free Pattern Round-Up



An unexpected blessed event occurred last month resulting in a new addition to our family!

My husband and I have been waiting to adopt for a long time and had nearly given up on the process as there were so many fits and starts. And the waiting...it can be hard on the heart. For privacy reasons I won't go into detail, but after we received THE call we had less than 24 hours notice to get ready for our newborn son! Suffice to say that our lives have been thrown into utter chaos (in an exhausting but good way).

I certainly don't have time to craft now and this is the first blog post I've been able to write in weeks, but I know that will change as baby grows older. To celebrate his arrival I decided to do a select round-up of vintage and vintage-inspired patterns that will delight the vintage enthusiast in your life.

First, every baby needs a special blanket. I adore this delicate crocheted blanket inspired by the BBC's television show Call the Midwife:

via Little Monkeys Crochet blog

Crochet this darling 1940s Cherry Motif Bib or this lacy Bows and Ribbon Bib from 1956 :

http://www.todaystreasure.net/product/free-easy-crochet-baby-bib-pattern-with-cherry-motif-vintage

via Today's Treasure

This knitted sweater looks like one my mother wore as a young child:

via Purple Kitty


Here's a Scotty Dog to crochet and a Kitten Softie to sew:

http://sentimentalbaby.blogspot.com/2013/09/free-scottie-dog-knitting-pattern-plus.html

http://sentimentalbaby.blogspot.com/2013/09/kitten-softie-toy-pattern.html
via Sentimental Baby blog

It's not a pattern, but for a good laugh take a look at the vintage-inspired board book The Boss Baby, a charming story about a baby CEO-type featuring delightful mid-century illustrations and a mid-century color palette. It's our favorite book these days.



Until next time....

I  purchased a copy of The Boss Baby. This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.com. If you decide to make a purchase through my link, Amazon will pay me a tiny commission for it. This helps to keep the rest of my content free, so thank you!

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Essentials for the Forces and More: free 1940s Knitting Patterns

Did you know that the Victoria & Albert Museum has digitized some World War II-era knitting patterns and made them freely available on their website?  The patterns hail from 1940s publications  such as Woman's Weekly and from booklets like "Essentials for the Forces" by Jaeger Hand-Knit in support of the war effort.



This booklet in particular includes many patterns designed for men and women in the service (such as helmet liners and balaclavas) but there are some truly fashionable gems in this book for those who want to put together an authentic vintage look:

You can download the text of each pattern as a PDF or Word document (I linked to the PDF under each image in this post).  These knitted turbans are my favorite pattern, and the directions look very easy even for slow beginning knitters like myself:

PDF

The "When You're Off Duty" sweater is quite elegant (they are a bit hard to see, but notice that she's wearing dress clips at the collar):

PDF

The lion and tiger toys would make great handmade gifts for a young person (or a young-at-heart person!) today:

PDF

The Victory Jumper (a sweater) is just too cute:

PDF

Check out the rest of the knitting patterns on the V & A site. There is also a section on Ravelry for Victoria & Albert Museum patterns if you need help with directions, especially as the patterns use British knitting terms.




By the way, if you're on Ravelry my username is SerendipityVint. Connect with me!


Images courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum