 Weldon's Seventh Series is full of even more "useful articles for personal and home decoration". Let's find out what that includes! There are 26 items and 20 (not 30) illustrations this time. Five are antimacassars and three more stitch patterns that they say are good for antimacassars. Antimacassars must have been very useful!  Amazon Stripe Antimacassar and an Infant's Petticoat  Bourbon Rose Pattern for Antimacassar For clothing and wearable accessories there is a Tam O'Shanter (of course) and a Smoking Cap (with no illustration), trimming for a chemise, an infant's petticoat (pictured above) and the Etta Petticoat for a two-year old.
There's this cute (and useful) set of a Princess Pelisse, a cape and a hat.   Other useful clothing and accessories include baby gloves, chemise trimming, a boa and a muffler, a gentleman's vest and a lady's petticoat. They also have another "quilt" square along with a hexagon and a border.
 I thought about making the "Roman Stripe, A Lovely Pattern for a Chair-Back" mostly because of the introduction to it. Many of the patterns jump right into the instructions but when we get a little intro to it, it makes it a little more fun. Maybe they put a little extra into the description because there isn't a photo. The Roman Stripe introduction says, "worked throughout in plain double crochet, and the beauty of the pattern consists in the arrangement of the various colours, which are artistic, and therefore will harmonise with the surroundings in almost any room with the proviso that should blue predominate therin a pretty shade of pale China Blue be substituted for the apple green here mentioned." The pattern appears to be like tapestry crochet. They are alternating colors in every stitch and cutting the ends after every row and restarting a new row with the same side facing the whole time. The yarn at the beginning and ends of the rows will be the fringe. I wasn't quite up the challenge though and decided to make a Wool Dahlia for next week's blog. They say you can put 12 of them together to make an antimacassar. I'm just going to make one dahlia.
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I decided to make the Jar for Pence (not that Pence!) for this week's project. It looked pretty adorable in the illustration.  The pattern says I need one skein of pale blue and a small amount of white fingering weight wool and a No. 10 bone needle. I used some Teksrena Wool that a friend gave me in turquoise and light gray. The current equivalent to the No. 10 hook is a size E or 3.5mm. I didn't rewrite the pattern because it seemed pretty straightforward when I read through it. I think that this was one of the quickest projects I've made so far from the Weldon's book.  Jar instructions in UK terms. To start, I tried to follow their directions of working eight single crochets into a joined chain of three but it was hard to get eight of them into that tiny circle so I did a magic circle instead. The base is basically a circle and goes through round five before it switches to double crochet. In row six you start making popcorn stitches. They don't call them that and they have a slightly different way of making them. Instead of dropping the last stitch and putting the hook through the top of the first stitch in the group they have you somehow "catch the crochet hook in the top stitch of the first." That has the benefit of not dropping a stitch but I couldn't make it work so I did the popcorn stitches my way. After I adjusted for that the rest of it went pretty fast. I would have just made the handles separately and sewn them on but they crocheted them on as they went. I thought that was a clever way of attaching them. The jar is about 3 inches tall and 4.5 inches across. I used only 12 grams of yarn to make this so it would be a good scrap project.  Time for scoring:
Is the pattern easy to understand? Yes. 1.0 Does it look like the illustration? Yes 1.0 Would someone wear or use this? Yes, we have coins in it right now. 1.0 Did I enjoy making this? Yes! 1.0 This project gets a 4 out of 4!  This series of useful articles says it has thirty illustrations but I only counted 25 for the 23 patterns. Lest you think they're slacking off on the number of patterns some of the ones in this issue are definitely more complex. It starts you out with a little jar, a collar and a triangle shaped scarf and moves right into this lovely frock for a child of two years. This is done in Tunisian with fingering weight wool.  If your child is just a little to old for that one, you could try the frock for a three year old. This is also done in fingering weight wool and uses several different hook sizes.  For something less complicated, this skirt is done in Tunisian with pink and white worsted weight wool.  Maybe you'd prefer something for yourself? How about this "Cross-over"? It's described as being "suitable for outdoor wear under a jacket or a fur cloak or may be worn in the house." They suggest white and peacock blue fingering weight wool along with six pearl buttons.  There were some simpler and smaller objects. I thought this crochet ball was fun. The description says, "These balls are greatly liked by children, and dessert dish full arranged as oranges makes an attractive and profitable addition to a stall at a bazaar." They do it in a fingering weight wool but I think it could be done in any weight of yarn. It seems like there is a Tam in almost every series. This time we get a fluted one done in fingering weight wool.
I considered both of these for next weeks project but ultimately decide on the jar. There is a photo and I'll share it next week.
The Fifth Series is all edgings and insertions. Before I decided on the Polo Edging, I tried a few others and had a trouble following many of them. I wanted to share one where I could at least get past the first row.  The Polo Edging is five rows and it's sort of worked on it's side with the two row scallop edging added on when it's done. I didn't re-write this one since there weren't that many rows but there were times I wished I had written it out. The printing errors kept throwing me off. Aside from that problem that this was a pretty simple edging to make. Many of the others had instructions that were two to three times longer. I have some patience but not enough to dig through instructions for something I won't use or won't be able to find someone to give it to.  The pattern doesn't suggest a specific thread or a hook size. I used a 1.65 mm steel crochet hook and Knit-Cro-Sheen which is a size 10 thread to make the little sample below. The blocking board squares are all one inch so it's easy to tell that it's about 2.5 inches long. If you wanted different size you could block it bigger or use smaller thread for something more delicate.  On to the scoring:
Is the pattern easy to understand? Yes. 1.0 Does it look like the illustration? Yes. 1.0 Would someone wear/use this? Maybe? I'm sure it's very "useful". 0.75 Did I enjoy making it? Mostly. Not so much that I wanted to keep going after the small section I did though. 0.75 Total is 3.5 out of 4. Next week we'll move on from edgings to useful articles for personal and home decoration. |
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