Tank Tops and Toggles: a Selection of Knitting Patterns from 1970 to 1979

This is the eighth post in my series on 20th century knitting patterns (you can see all the other posts in the series here), and it offers a selection of knitting patterns from the years from 1970 to 1979. And I must say researching this post gave me some fleeting yet intense moments of wanting to throw myself under a Donna Summers tour bus. I won't even blame the general seventies aesthetic. Yes, there are plenty of examples of horrible seventies attire and bad hair out there, but you can say that of any decade. All the patterns for this series were cherry-picked. Every set of ten patterns I have selected for this series because they were wearable and attractive by modern standards was the result of several hours spent sifting through a hundred or more patterns that weren't. On the whole, I find more to admire about seventies fashion than those of the sixties. The clothes available for every day (as opposed to disco wear) had neither the prim constraint of the early sixties nor the psychedelic extremes of the sixties but instead achieved a happy medium of relaxed, flattering, wearable style.

I think there are two factors that made my seventies pattern research slightly scarring. The first one is that the materials available in the seventies were generally ghastly — horrible stiff, scratchy, synthetic fibres in awful colours — and garments can only be as good as the materials from which they are made. The shapes of seventies clothing were generally good, and if I re-imagine seventies designs in modern fibres and colours they suddenly look very desirable indeed. It was the fabric used that made the leisure suit such a byword in tackiness, not the basic style of it. The second contributing factor is that the seventies were a bad time for crafting. Needlework is of course traditionally the province of women, and given there were many more women in the workforce in the seventies than there had been for decades, women simply had less time for such things. The crafting industry inexplicably responded by dumbing down crafting kits to make them more desirable, and again, the fibres and colours available in the seventies were wretched, so the result was not pretty. So while the clothing design of the seventies wasn't too bad (save and except for a few bad styles such as the hot pants above), the home décor and accessory patterns were often really freaking terrible. I saw patterns for matching toilet seat and toilet roll covers, for lampshades described as "Tiffany-style" that probably had Louis Comfort Tiffany rolling in his grave, for pointless and retina-burning mobiles, for driving gloves and steering wheel cover sets (why?!?), and for some truly frightening dolls and toys.

All that said, I did find a pretty good set of clothing patterns, and I hope you like them. Unfortunately although I do my best to include at least one menswear, one child's, and one home décor pattern in each post of this series, these seventies-era patterns are almost all women's patterns because I just couldn't find anything I liked for any of those categories. But look on the bright side... I have not included a link to the hot pants set pattern above. You're welcome.

When I began to work on this post, I thought I should try to find a poncho pattern for it, because they were so archetypically seventies. It didn't happen because I dislike ponchos and didn't find any that gave me any reason to change my mind on that point. However, seventies designers also seemed to favour knitted coats. This duffle jacket pattern originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly in June of 1972 and is available as a free pattern. If I were making this jacket, I'd probably replace the toggle fastenings with something else, though smaller toggles would probably look current enough.





This halter top pattern originally appeared in Mon Tricot Fashion Edition's Spring/Summer 1973 issue. There actually isn't a pattern available for this piece, but who needs one when this pattern is simply two tube scarves knitted long enough to fit around the wearer and then sewn together? I adore the colours of the contemporary version of this design.

This open front jacket design originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly in March of 1974, and is a free pattern.

I love all the clever detail in this turtleneck pullover, and think it would look pretty amazing done in a solid colour with a handpainted yarn as the contrast colour. This pattern appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly, in February 1977 and is a free pattern.

This hooded jacket appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly in February 1977, and is a free pattern. To update it for modern wear, I'd raise the dropped shoulders, consider another kind of fastenings than the toggles, and ditch the blanket stitch, especially at the top of the sleeve, because it makes the coat look like something from the Bride of Frankenstein's trousseau. Instead I'd finish the garment with a picot edging, which could always be done in a contrast colour if desired.

One of the things that has really struck me as I have worked through this series of posts was that baby knits have consistently remained very traditional. Every decade produced remarkably similar-looking lacy baby blankets, and lacy, ribbon-trimmed bonnet, bootee and sweater sets, and they are still commonly available patterns today. I expected something different from the progressive seventies, yet they had embroidered bunting bags and ribbon-trimmed surplice baby sweaters as well. This baby jacket, which originally appeared in Needlework and Craft in Spring 1979, looks as though it could have been created at any time in the previous five or following three decades. This pattern is available for free.

This is the Rorschach Sweater, designed by Elizabeth Zimmerman. It appeared in Needlecraft for Today in November/December 1979 and is available as a $1 download. The pattern includes directions for knitting the sleeves cuffed or belled, and it's possible to go with one tab or none at all, and to omit the belt.

The sporty-looking stripe is so common in seventies fashions, probably because there was such a upswing of interest in physical fitness. This top rather looks as though it were made to go with striped-top sweat socks pulled nearly to the knees, but I think it would look much less so if the colours were updated. The pattern is available from the Vintage Knitting Lady for £2.00, or you can get a PDF for £1.50.

Quite like these little tie-top tanks. The pattern is available from the Vintage Knitting Lady for £2.00, or you can get a PDF for £1.50.

This style of hat is so very seventies and yet would still look right today. The pattern is available from the Vintage Knitting Lady for £2.00, or you can get a photocopy for £1.99 or a PDF for £1.50.

Mini-Skirts and Mod Style: a Selection of Knitting Patterns from 1960-1969

This post is the seventh on my series of posts on 20th century knitting patterns (you can find the other posts in the series here) and contains a selection of ten patterns dating from 1960 to 1969. It was surprisingly difficult to find patterns for this post. The first post in this series, for 1900-1909, took more time than any post I've written for this blog because there were so few Edwardian patterns available of any description, and so few were wearable by modern standards, but the posts have gotten easier and easier to find by the decade. I assumed the post for the sixties would be a snap, especially since Mad Men, a show about a New York advertising business in the 1960s, has renewed interest in sixties style. I had no problem at all finding material for my post on Mad Men knitting projects. But as it turned out, there just weren't that many sixties-era patterns available online. The web sites I've been depending on to find patterns for previous posts in this series all have collections that end with the fifties. I don't know why. Could it be that there were just fewer patterns available from then, as crafting went into a downturn during the sixties and the seventies? Or perhaps the patterns are just generally less appealing to knitters. I know I don't generally care for sixties fashions myself; I find the styles from the first half of the decade too staid and the fashions from the second half just plain ugly. However, I kept searching until I found ten patterns that I consider presentable and here they are.

The checked man's pullover above is the first pattern, which was published in Eva Breit magazine in January 1961. And the pattern is free. The one drawback is that the pattern is in Dutch and the odds are you don't read Dutch. However, I dared to include it because Google translate does what seemed to me on a quick read through to be an amazingly good job of translating the instructions, and I think a good knitter can manage to figure out what is not a terribly complicated pattern. Again, I had quite a hard time finding patterns for this post.

This simple sleeveless top is another Eva Breit magazine pattern from its January 1961, that again is in Dutch and must be translated.

I can't get over how not-knitted this Houndstooth Jacket looks. The aim of much early sixties knitting seems to have been to make knitted garments that didn't look knitted. There was a lot of fine gauge stockinette involved. This is another Eva Breit magazine Dutch-language pattern from January 1961.

This Nordic-Style Ski Sweater originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 1963 issue of Vogue Knitting, and can now be found in Vogue Knitting Vintage Collection: Classic Knits from the 1930s-1960s.

This Natural Beauty pattern may be my favourite in the entire post. It was originally published in The Australian Women's Weekly in October 1964, and is available for free.

I love the shape of this Mohair Bag, and the fact that it's mohair, but it might be a little too large in scale for a modern woman's taste. However, it should be easy to scale it down to whatever size you wish. This pattern originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly in June 1965 and is available for free.

This Long Leggy Gear pattern for lace stockings appears to have been knitted in white, but I'd suggest that you knit them in another colour, such as anything but white. Grown women just can't get away with white stockings. This pattern originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly in March 1966 and is available for free.

This Zipper Jacket and Cap is a Patons Australia pattern from 1968, and is a free pattern. I'd advise against making that hat, but the jacket is quite sharp and mod.

The At The Park design is quite cute, though it should probably lengthened for wear today and I see it in a variegated yarn and coordinating solid colour yoke rather than in black and white. This pattern originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly in September 1968 and is available for free.

This knitted dress with lacy panels is a nice little number that would look quite timely today, though again you may want to lengthen it somewhat. This pattern originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly in May 1969 and is available for free.

Off-the-Shoulder Tops and Swing Coats: a Selection of Knitting Patterns from 1950-1959

This post is the sixth in my series of posts on 20th century knitting patterns (you can see the rest of the posts in the series here), and offers a selection of patterns dating from 1950 to 1959. I wasn't particularly looking forward to doing this post, because I've never cared for fifties fashions for women. The styles seem too exaggerated, and at the same too staid, to me to be very wearable or aesthetically appealing. The 1950s were a very prosperous yet very conservative time, and instead of using this time of plenty and technological innovation to continue the progressive arc of the last three decades and make more wearable, modern clothes, designers of the 1950s seemed to wish to swamp women in more fabric, and in more restrictive and even more infantile styles than had been seen in thirty years.

But perhaps my opinions on 1950s styles have been coloured by those of my mother. Born in 1938, Mum wore fifties fashions from her adolescence into her early adulthood, and her memories of 1950s styles are, to understate the case, unsentimental and unenthusiastic. I've never heard her speak negatively of any of the other decades of fashion that she's lived through, but she loathed fifties fashions. She hated the voluminous skirts, the exaggerated silhouettes, and the hats, which she thought she didn't have the height or the right kind of face to carry off, and she especially hated the garter belts one wore with stockings back then. As she puts it, "As soon as you sat down, you felt a ping! ping! and then you had to figure out how to get to the bathroom without your stockings falling down around your ankles for everyone to see." And, back then, it was a lot less easy to just eschew a style you didn't like. As my mother says, when she was a young woman, "There was just one look in style at a time, and if you didn't wear it, you were out." She does speak warmly of the girdle's virtues, but that's all.

That said, I do think the fifties weren't devoid of stylish, wearable pieces that look good today, and I had very little trouble finding a selection of eleven 1950s knitting patterns for you, in which not a single poodle skirt is to be the seen. The fair isle twin set above is one of these patterns. The twin set was one of the fifties styles I especially wanted to include in this post, but I didn't want just any twin set, as a lot of them look dowdy and unflattering to modern eyes. I knew this one, with its eye-catching yoke, was the one for this post as soon as I saw it. This pattern appeared in Marriner's pattern booklet no. 162, and is a free pattern available on Subversive Femme.

Here we have an array of snazzy fifties socks and footwear. It was quite the thing in the fifties, as well as in the previous few decades, for men to wear patterned socks. My father still has a pair of argyle socks knitted for him by his grandmother in 1948, and he likes to tell the story of how my aunt knitted a pair of argyle socks for her boyfriend as a teenager, and how her boyfriend was so proud of the socks that he wore them to church and sat with his feet sticking out of the pew and into the aisle so that everyone could see them. The items at the bottom right corner are Norwegian slipper socks. In Richard Yates's novel Revolutionary Road, published in 1961, one character dons a pair of Norwegian slipper socks with the reflection that they are "really the nicest things in the world for knocking about the house". The booklet containing all these patterns and more is Fleisher's Hand Knit Socks for Men, Women and Children, no. 86, and is available for $16.95 from Iva Rose Vintage Reproductions.

The off-the-shoulder top was another style I definitely wanted to include in this post. I love this beautiful sequinned one, which is meant to be part of an evening ensemble, but of course the sequins can be left off as the top is so well-shaped that it would be interesting without them. This pattern originally appeared in Woman and Home in January 1950, and is available for free on Vintage Purls.

The reason I included eleven patterns instead of the usual ten in this post was so that I could include this pattern. It is crocheted but was too cute to leave out, so it got added in as a bonus pattern. It's called the Beau Catcher (reminding me of a certain 1950s cake pattern I have that's called Blueberry Boy Bait), it originally appeared in a Women's Day collection of knitting patterns called To Knit and Wear in 1950, and the pattern is now available for free.

This Polka Dot Ascot and Scarf, which looks to me exactly like something that might appear in Knitscene now, originally appeared in a Women's Day collection of knitting patterns called To Knit and Wear in 1950, and the pattern is now available for free.

I can see this Slipover Blouse for Winter looking really sharp on a modern woman. This pattern originally appeared in the Australian Women's Weekly in April of 1951, and is available for free.

Norwegian Mittens were another popular item during the fifties, and this pair is certainly very pretty. This pattern originally appeared in Needlewoman and Needlecraft No. 53, in 1953, and is now available for free.

I'm not a fan of the swing coat, but it was another look I felt I just had to include because it is just so archetypically fifties, and I must admit this Swing Coat is quite stylish, though anyone making it now will want to update the colourway. This pattern originally appeared in Stitchcraft in November 1953, and is a free pattern available from Subversive Femme.

This Angora Collar looks as though it might be an modern and improved variation on the cowl or on the little pullover shoulder cape designs that are appearing so regularly in knitting magazines lately. The angora's softness makes it drape attractively and the little buttons will allow one to take the thing off reasonably gracefully. This pattern originally appeared in Housewife Magazine in 1954 is now available as a free pattern from Sheep and Chick.

This little top is another piece that looks very modern and wearable and flattering for most women. I don't know what to make of the poodle, which appeared as a prop with disturbing regularity in so many of the fifties-era patterns I viewed while researching this post. I also came across patterns for knitted toy poodles which seem to have been popular in the fifties. My mother even has one that she made, in mint green. Notice how I didn't include the pattern in this post. I'm at a loss to explain the fifties-era poodles fetish, and am not even sure I want to know the explanation. This little pullover pattern appeared in Stitchcraft in March of 1955 and is available as a download for $1.25.

I really wanted to include a man's argyle sweater pattern in this post, but was not able to find one, so I had content myself with including some argyle sock patterns and this two-tone men's pullover. If the two tones are too high-contrast for your tastes, the sweater could always be knitted in two more subtly variant colours. This pattern is Bairns-wear no. 763, and is available in the original format for £2.75, as a colour photocopy £1.99, and as a pdf for £1.50 on the Vintage Knitting Lady. This site didn't have individual links for each pattern so you'll have to scroll down the page at the link provided to find the two-tone sweater, but on the upside there are also a number of quite nice 1940s and 1950s men's sweater patterns on the page.

Gloves and Gathered Shoulders: a Selection of Knitting Patterns from 1940 to 1949

Today's post is the fifth in my series of 20th Century knitting pattern posts (you can see the other posts in the series here), and offers a selection of patterns from the 1940s. As I move forward through the 20th century, these period patterns that are wearable by today's standards become easier to find with each post, until it's reached the point where the only challenge is finding patterns that look period instead of looking too generically classic and too much like the designs of the present. This was especially true of the forties because its fashions reflected the austerity of the war and post-war years. I've chosen not to include any of the patterns I found that were designed specifically for the war effort because they were simply too utilitarian to be attractive to modern knitters.

The pattern above is the Bolero Bed Jacket of the late 1940s. Of course these days it would not be considered a bed jacket but a spencer, and it's quite similar to the spencers that are very much in style right now. I like the graceful shaping of it and the ribbon tie and think it would look very pretty over a simple empire-waisted dress. It's available on Subversive Femme as a free pattern.

This Lady's Evening Jumper pattern is from Jane Waller's Knitting Fashions of the 1940s: Styles, Patterns, and History. The empire cut was very popular in the 1940s.

This is the Gwen Cardigan design, and is a Patons Australia pattern that is available for free.

This is a knitted dress pattern that originally appeared in Alice Carrol’s Complete Guide to Modern Knitting & Crocheting, published in 1942, and the pattern is available for free. It has the gathered shoulders that were so typical of forties women's wear designs.

The Keryn pattern is another free pattern offered by Subversive Femme and that dates from the late forties. It's meant to be knitted in angora, which was all the rage for women's sweaters from the late forties through the fifties.

Here's a Fair Isle beret and glove set that is another free pattern from Subversive Femme. In the 1940s a lady always wore gloves on the street.

I just had to include this pattern for Fishnet Stockings. In the 1940s fishnet stockings seem to have had very different sartorial connotations than they do now. One wouldn't wear fishnet stockings with such sensible shoes these days. This pattern was originally published in From Stockings and Underwear: Vogue-Knit Series No. 35, and is now one of the catalogue of free 1940s patterns offered by the Victoria and Albert Museum, and you can view and print the PDF here.

The Biscay design is another free pattern offered by Subversive Femme. Most of the 1940s men's patterns I saw while researching this post were just too generic to include, but I thought this one had a bit of style. Apparently the pattern mentions knitting a "tie-keeper" on the inside neck edge.

This child's Tin Soldier Jersey is also from Jane Waller's Knitting Fashions of the 1940s: Styles, Patterns, and History, and is just too cute.

Speaking of too much cuteness, this pattern for Tim the Tiger and Leo the Lion definitely fall into that category. These toys were designed by "Finella" for Wife and Home Magazine, and the pattern is is now one of the catalogue of free 1940s patterns offered by the Victoria and Albert Museum, and you can view and print the PDF here.

Stripes and Swagger: a Selection of Knitting Patterns from 1930-1939

Well, here we are at the fourth post in my twentieth century knitting pattern series (you can see the other posts in the series here), which features a selection of knitwear designs dating from 1930 to 1939. I have been looking forward to doing this particular post for weeks. The thirties are my favourite decade of the twentieth century in terms of clothing fashion because the clothes were not only wearable in the modern sense but flattering while still holding to a certain old school sartorial standard, and the result is ever so stylish. In the twenties the ideal figure for women was boyish and women's clothing tended to be more than a little on the shapeless side; in the thirties the Jazz babies grew up and took to well-tailored womanly styles that looked better on most women. (I mean, have you seen Gosford Park? All those bias-cut evening gowns are to die for. If I may say that about a murder mystery.) This post was also made more rewarding to write because it is the first one in the Twentieth Century series for which I could finally find and include authentic menswear patterns.

All that aside, let's get started and have a look at the ten 1930s patterns I've selected.

This is the Swagger Scarf, which has definite Art Deco look to it. It's a free pattern and is all in garter stitch so it's a straightforward pattern to knit.






This is the cute and striking Tennis Blouse pattern in both its original form and in a modern version. It's a free pattern.

This is Tennis Jumper pattern, which again reflects the prevalence of the the Art Deco aesthetic during the thirties. I'm terribly sorry for the poor quality of this photo. I liked the sharply graphic design so much I wanted to include it, though I know poor visuals like this make it difficult for many people to see the appeal. Perhaps one of you will knit this design and send me a photo of yourself modelling it so I can add it to the post. This pattern originally appeared in The Western Mail (which was an Australian newspaper) on December 10, 1931, and is a free pattern. I do wish newspapers had kept up the practice of including free patterns up until the rise of the internet and Ravelry, especially if they were as nice as this one.

This striped sweater was printed in The Australian Women's Weekly, on July 29, 1933, and is a free pattern. It was common for thirties-era sweaters to be what we'd call a cropped length now, so if you want to make any of these patterns you will probably want to lengthen them. This one will look better lengthened because the extra inches down below will balance out the stripes on the top.

This lace evening gown is the Alora pattern. A number of Ravelry members who are making it appear to be making it for their wedding gowns or bridesmaid dresses. It appeared in the Minerva Style Book, Volume 33 in 1934. This pattern is available for free, but you can also buy the book it's in from Iva Rose Vintage Reproductions for $16.95. The Minerva pattern books are all very stylish, which is probably to be expected given that they became part of the Condé Nast publishing group and then morphed into the original Vogue Knitting. If you love thirties knitwear fashions, I recommend a browse through the collection of thirties pattern books on the Iva Rose site.

How modern-looking is this zip front men's cardigan? It looks like it's straight out of knit.wear. It is pretty basic, but I think the good lines and the flap pockets give it some style. This pattern was originally published in Minerva Men's Book, Volume 37, in 1934, and the book is available from Iva Rose Vintage Reproductions for $16.95.

The Starring Stripes pattern appeared in Stitchcraft in November 1936 and is a free pattern. There are so many such smart little short-sleeved top designs in the thirties-era patterns I looked at while researching this post that I could hardly choose among them.

This little girl's striped dress pattern originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly, on August 13, 1938, and is a free pattern.

This design is the Bairnswear 561 pattern and it's from the late thirties. It's available from The Vintage Knitting Lady as a photocopy for £1.99 or as a PDF for £1.50.

This Swagger Coat is a Corticelli design and is available on Subversive Femme as a free pattern. I saw other swagger coat patterns while I was researching this post and it seems to have been a recognized style for coats to have a tab fastening at the top of an otherwise buttonless coat. The existence of a Swagger Coat style and the Swagger Scarf above makes me think swaggering must have been a thing in the thirties.