Ladies Ribbed Crochet Tie, with Shaped Ends - 1909

This week's pattern is from the Crochet Designs reprinted from Victorian and Edwardian sources that I featured last week. It is reprinted from "Needlecraft Practical Journal, Vol 6, No. 79, published in 1909.

Ladies Ribbed Tie

The pattern says it's intended to be worked in Briggs' crochet silk or Silver Shield crochet thread. A quick check of their yarn comparison chart tells me that they consider that a "fine weight" and give us these examples for "modern yarns and threads":

• Pearl cotton no 8 and 5
• Lyscordette cotton (also a size 5 cotton)
• standard 2-ply baby yarn
• 2-ply Shetland lace wt wool

The only one I recognize off that list is pearl cotton and that seems like it would be pretty different than lace weight wool. I went with size 10 crochet thread in off-white for this project because I had a lot of it and it's lace weight. The pattern doesn't give you a hook size to use - I used a 1.75 mm. There is also no gauge or tension given but the sizing shouldn't be too much of an issue with a scarf/tie.

The entire project is worked in back loop only to get that ribbed look and it's done entirely in chains and what they call double crochet (aka single crochet US terminology). This is made in two pieces that are, "neatly joined at centre of neckband".

This wasn't a difficult project until I got to the fringe. Here are the instructions for the fringe, "The fringe should be crocheted on over a piece of card about 2 inches deep. Cut the edges and divide the strands at the top by clustering into groups, and knotting with a needle and thread as for drawn thread work." I ended up just making the fringe over a 4 inch card and just attaching them every few stitches and then doing the clustering part. I don't think it's quite what they had in mind but it worked.

Since my last dyeing experiment went pretty well I thought I'd give it another try and just make this one a solid green since the off-white was kind of boring. This time it didn't go quite as well. There's some variation in the final dyed fabric that you can see below.

Overall this went pretty well. Let's add up the score:

• Is the pattern easy to understand? Yes except for the fringe .75 
• If there is a gauge could I match it? There was no gauge but I'm not sure it was necessary 1.0 
• Does it look like the photo? Yes 1.0 
• Would someone wear this? I'm not sure. It seems like a stomach warmer and it was really hard to tie like a tie. Getting those big ends through the tie part was a pain.  Pushing the knot more towards my neck just made the skinny ends hang down and didn't help. Maybe if the neck part was shorter that would have helped. I'm going with 0 on this criteria. 
• Did I enjoy making it? Yes, it was fairly simple and a nice tv project 1.0

That gives it a score of 3.75

Next week I'll be showing you some patterns from a 1916 Corticelli Silk Mills booklet and the week after that I'll have the results of one of the patterns from the booklet.
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