Diagonal Block Lace (1923): vintage crochet pattern

Materials

• Size 70 mercerized cotton crochet thread — approximate; the original was Clark's O. N. T. Mercerized Crochet, No. 70
• Steel crochet hook
• Tapestry needle for the ends
• Hook: Start with a 1.0 mm (US steel 11–12) hook — approximate. Change size until the edging lies flat.

Abbreviations (US terms)

ch

chain

sl st

slip stitch

dc

double crochet

sp

space

st

stitch

sts

stitches

rep

repeat

row

row

inc

increase

Notes before you start

• Source: "Diagonal Block Lace", Clark's O. N. T. Designs for 100 Edges and Insertions, Book No. 19, The Clark Thread Co., Newark, N. J., 1923. Public domain in the USA.
• As printed — materials: Clark's O. N. T. Mercerized Crochet, No. 70; Clark's O. N. T. Crochet Hook No. 12. Gauge: Not given.
• Modernisation note: Stitches are converted by this book's own key (“INSTRUCTION PAGE”, book page 30), not by the look of the abbreviation. The key defines: St. stitch; Ch chain; Sk “Skip, pass by”; S c single crochet — “Draw a loop through stitch or chain directed (2 loops on needle), draw thread through both”, the modern US single crochet; D c double crochet — “Used most frequently in daisy petals or similar shapes. Thread over needle, draw loop through stitch directed (3 loops on needle), draw thread through all 3 at once”, which is the modern US HALF double crochet, not the modern double; Tr treble — “Thread over needle, draw loop through stitch directed (3 on needle), draw off two loops at a time, twice”, which is the modern US DOUBLE crochet; H tr half treble — “Make as above, leaving the last two loops on the needle, to be taken off later… the two loops are regarded as one”, the book's cluster-forming stitch; D tr double treble — “Thread over twice, thread through stitch (4 on needle), draw off two at a time, three times”, the modern US treble; Tr tr triple treble — “Thread over three times, draw off two at a time, four times”, the modern US double treble; Lg tr long treble — “Made like tr tr, with the thread over a given number of times”. So this 1923 book's treble names stand one step taller than modern US names. Every book tr is written dc here, every d tr is written tr, every tr tr is written dtr, and the book's d c is written hdc. This is a genuine finding rather than an assumption: 1920s books often do use modern US terms, but this one does not, and the key's own working definitions are what settle it.
• Modernisation note: The book's wording is written in modern US form: “needle” and “hook” both mean the hook and are written hook; “thread over” = yo; “skip” = sk; “catch” = sl st or join, according to what the row is doing; “Repeat from *” = rep from *; st(s) = st(s); sp = sp. The book's OCR prints the ordinal “1st” as “Ist” throughout and that quirk is kept in the excerpts but not in the rows.
• Modernisation note: The printed paragraphs are split into one row, round or step per line; stitch order and counts are unchanged. Section headings added for navigation. Ordinal row names (“1st row”, “2nd row”, “3rd row”) are written Row 1, Row 2, Row 3, and the book's word “row” is kept even where the work goes around.
• Modernisation note: Clark's O. N. T. Mercerized Crochet numbers are read as roughly equal to the modern crochet thread sizes of the same number — approximate only.
• Modernisation note: The Clark's O. N. T. crochet hook numbers printed here are 1923 maker's steel-hook numbers and do not map onto the modern US steel scale, so any metric hook suggested here is ours, read across from the thread size; the printed hook number is recorded in the original materials.
• Modernisation note: No gauge is printed for this design — the book prints no gauge, tension or mesh count anywhere. Work a sample and change hook size until the edging lies flat.
• Modernisation note: No finished measurement is printed for this design; it is worked to the length of the piece it trims, so its length is set by that piece.
• Modernisation note: Check: no colour is printed for this design. The plates photograph as a plain light thread, and the book's own ad pages list Clark's O. N. T. Mercerized Crochet in White and in colours.
• Modernisation note: Space and block are the book's filet units, defined on the same page-30 key: Sp space — “With 1 tr made, ch 2, sk 2, tr in next st”; Bl block — “4 tr in 4 adjoining stitches. For two or more adjoining bl, count 3 tr for each bl and add one for the last bl, as there is always one tr in common between each two adjoining bl.” Widen and narrow (Wd, N) are the key's shaping words, and H bl half block is “another name for the narrowed block… made with h tr”. In modern terms a space is 1 dc, ch 2, sk 2, and a block is 4 dc, counting 3 dc per block after the first.
• Modernisation note: No yardage is printed for this design. The book's back-cover table (book page 30 of the printed numbering) gives ball yields for ten designs only, and this is not one of them, so no yardage is given here.
• Modernisation note: This design is on the same page as five that send you to a squared working pattern, but it does not: it prints every row and ends “Repeat from beginning of 2nd row”, so it is complete as printed and is transcribed here.
• Modernisation note: Check: the OCR of Row 7 prints “1 SP, 1 bl, 1 sp, at end. Repeat from beginning of 2nd row.” with the words “widen 1 sp” floating on the line above, broken across the column. Read together the row is “1 sp, 1 bl, 1 sp, widen 1 sp at end”, which is what the page image shows and is how it is written above.
• Modernisation note: Check: bl is the book's block and sp its space — see the note on the page-30 key. The row lines are left in the book's own filet shorthand rather than expanded stitch by stitch, because that is how the book prints them and expanding them would mean inventing the stitch counts the book leaves to the key.