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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Vintage Crochet Illustrations

The other day my friend Toni brought a bunch of her favorite crochet books to the needle arts group I meet with on Sunday afternoons. I had a great time looking through her books, but one of them stood out above the others. It was a vintage crochet book called The Complete Book of Crochet by Elizabeth Mathieson, published in 1946. The book itself was a 1947 edition.


The thing I found so remarkable about this book was its absolutely delightful vintage illustrations. I thought I'd share a few of them here today for your viewing pleasure. Please note that all of the images are the property of the author and the publisher. If you pin them please be sure to note in the description that they are from Elizabeth Mathieson's book. Enjoy!








What a fun bit of crochet tradition and history!

3 comments:

  1. I love them! Thank you for sharing the gorgeous illustrations with your readers - how fortunate you all were to be able to peruse this book. Are the patterns inside easy to follow? I am wondering whether crochet language has changed much since that time in the same way as all languages evolve and change over time.

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    1. So glad you like them! The patterns seemed to be written in more or less the same way as they are today. However, the text wasn't really separated out by rows, each row moved right on to the next without a line break. Not many charts either. Some of the designs were downright stylish even though they are more than 60 years old! Ugh, too bad I already have a bajillion+ things on my to-do list :P

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  2. I adore the photos I will use one for my page about the crafts that I make crochet.

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