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Fashion and History Intertwined
Perfectly Flawed 1 When I first began researching the knitwear of the early 20th Century contained in the Shetland Museum archive over four years ago, my only criteria were for the items to be beautiful, unique and to tell a story their own story or to be part of the story of Shetland, its inhabitants or its knitwear industry. The Vintage Shetland Project tells these tales alongside patterns created by reading each garment s own knitted story stitch by stitch, row by row. This task revealed much more than simply how each item was knitted. The more I studied them, the more I fell in love with them. But as I considered why I loved each piece it occurred to me that in so many of them there was an imperfection, a flaw, sometimes in the knitting, sometimes in the construction, sometimes in the yarns used, but most often because the garment had been washed, worn, loved, repaired, worn more, washed again, shrunk, adapted, repaired again, enlarged, worn more, passed on, loved more and so each story continued There is a cardigan which now has one sleeve significantly shorter than the other as it has been worn out, adapted and continued to be used, moving probably from a best cardigan to a work wear item. A sweater has been cut open down the front and changed slightly carelessly into a cardigan. Others, heavily worn, have been darned then darned again, prolonging a favourite garment s life. And of course, each and every one of these pieces has survived outliving its knitter on most occasions and has then been cherished by family or friends as a reminder of the wearer, the knitter, or a particular moment in time. As these garments slowly perish as they unfortunately will do, I hope to extend their life in another way, recording their image, their patterns, their stitches, and their past, and enabling knitters to read these histories and to be able to recreate these perfectly flawed knits too.
1 flawed Middle English (adjective): having or characterized by a fundamental weakness or imperfection.
Creating a Code As I am sure most of you are aware there are many ways to approach the process of copying the Fair Isle motifs in a garment. Most knitters will be familiar with the idea of sitting with a sheet of squared paper or graph paper plus pens or pencils and filling in the squares a process many Shetlanders have done for years. With so many garments to transcribe we needed a method that would be quicker than this however, and one that would record the exact colour used. A method that would create charts that we could reproduce on a computer suitable for printing within a desktop publishing package. So a graphics package seemed like an obvious choice or possibly a knitting stitch design program but after much consideration we realised that both these options would be too slow and restrictive for the amount of work we had to get through. We needed a simple code that could be input to represent the colours in any garment and also be used in a computer programme to translate the code back into colours. After looking at a selection of garments chosen from the Museum s collection we found we had 15 colours perfect to be represented as a hexadecimal code also known as base 16, or simply as hex. Unlike decimal (base 10) that is represented with the characters 0 through to 9 for the units, the hexadecimal units are represented by 0 through to 9 followed by A, B, C, D, E and F to represent numbers 0 to 15. Each colour in a garment was allocated a unit from the code to represent it, then that would be typed into a text editor to represent a single stitch of a motif.
Here let me live, and when I die Below the sea-pinks let me lie Where billows break and sea fowls cry Upon the crags of Vaila. George Sands, 1888
This iconic sleeveless pullover from the early twentieth century epitomises all that we see as traditional in stranded colourwork and yet just below the shoulder appears a motif which breaks one of the cardinal rules of ”Fair Isle• knitting. Sitting there proud as punch is a motif, not with two colours to a row but three!
Although knitted in the early 1960s this beautiful and original jumper is heavily influenced by the elegant and embellished knitwear of the 1950s. The knitter, Mary Abernethy of Lerwick cleverly combined this sophisticated decoration with OXO motifs and the popular yoke construction which became such a powerhouse of the Shetland knit industry during this period. In 1963, Mary entered this jumper in the County Arts and Crafts Exhibition and was awarded a 1st class order of merit in the Adult age group at the exhibition which was held at the Town Hall in Lerwick. The stunning silhouette created by this elegantly constructed jumper echoes that seen in the couture and ready-to-wear clothing of Ricci, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Dior, Fath and many more. Most noticeably it reflects the knitted fashions being created in the Scottish borders by companies sush as Lyle & Scott, Ballantyne and of course, Pringle. It is knitted in the round with very technically skilled shaping at the yoke and neck which work with the knitted-in beads to create a necklace-like effect framing the wearer s face. You can also see the influence of fully fashioned shaping that had become popular in manufactured knitwear. Knitting patterns featuring beads had also become more and more popular through the 1950s as opulence and luxury was once again allowed after the restrictions of wartime had ended. Stitchcraft and Woman s Weekly amongst others, featured patterns for beaded jumpers and guidance on knitting with beads also appeared in knitting manuals published at this time.
Vaila, home of my good friend Dorota, is the setting for the photographs which appear throughout the book. Vaila is an island situated off the west coast of Shetland buffeted and eroded by the Atlantic Ocean surrounding it. Around two kilometres in diameter with around eight hundred acres of land, this ancient isle can only be reached by boat. Shetland sheep and native ponies roam freely across the island and all manner of bird life fly above or nest amongst the peat hills. With its own geos and voes, plus stacks off its easterly point, along with lochs, ruined crofts, burnt mounds and cairns, it is, as Richard Rowland, Dorota‘s husband, so succinctly puts it, a microcosm of Shetland, providing space, peace, natural beauty and wonderful light.
rights off Shetland. However by 1873 the island and the fishing around it could no longer support the residents of the island and the population slowly decreased. Then in 1888 the island was purchased by Herbert Anderton a wealthy Bradford mill owner. He set about a major renovation of the island and its properties, but most noteworthy of all, he engaged an architect to design the baronial hall which proudly stands to this day, welcoming visitors to Vaila. This incongruous yet beautiful building contained lavish interiors and decoration. Around the hall, formal walled gardens were planted creating a wonderful micro-climate where trees and flowers can grow protected from the harsh Atlantic winds.
In 1837 Arthur Anderson the founder of the P & O shipping line rented the island and set up the Shetland Fishing Company with a view to breaking the power of the lairds who controlled the fishing
Unfortunately the first world war brought changing fortunes for Herbert who lost his wealth trying to keep his mills going throughout the conflict. He retired to Vaila in 1933 before passing away in 1937.
www.susancrawfordvintage.com Hardback, 256 pages
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The Vintage Shetland Project is the culmination of the several years Susan has spent researching early 20th Century knitting in Shetland. With the help and support of Dr. Carol Christiansen, curator at the Shetland Museum, Susan has studied hand-knitted garments and accessories from the 1920s to 1960s, which are held in the Museum’s archives. She has chosen 26 pieces, recording their construction stitch for stitch then recreated them for the Vintage Shetland Project. These pieces – all with their own unique story to tell – have been developed into comprehensive multi-sized knitting patterns, complete with instructions, technical advice and illustrated with colour photography shot on Shetland. Susan also describes the mathematical journey she and her husband, Gavin, have been on, designing new computer software to interpret the data collected. Painstaking research provides an in-depth look at each piece, its knitter and its place in Shetland’s hand-knitting history. Photographed by Susan on the island of Vaila and compiled with her trademark attention to detail, this book is also a truly beautiful volume to own. With each hand-knitted piece and its knitter celebrated this book is both a treasury of Shetland knitting patterns and an insight into Shetland’s rich textile traditions.