Shell Point Lace No. 422 (1916): vintage crochet pattern

Materials

• Size 30 mercerized cotton crochet thread — approximate; the book prints only “No. 30 Thread”, with no brand
• Steel crochet hook
• Tapestry needle for the ends
• Hook: Start with a 1.25 mm (US steel 8) hook — approximate, and ours: the book prints no hook size. Change size until the edging lies flat.

Abbreviations (US terms)

ch

chain

sl st

slip stitch

dc

double crochet

sh

shell

sp

space

ch-sp

chain space

st

stitch

sts

stitches

sk

skip

lp

loop

rep

repeat

row

row

Notes before you start

• Source: "No. 422" (422), Edgings in Crochet, Book No. Four, Valley Supply Co., St. Louis, Mo., 1916. Public domain in the USA.
• As printed — materials: No. 30 Thread. Gauge: Not given.
• Modernisation note: Stitches are converted by this book's own key (“Abbreviations Used”, book page 2) read together with the designs, not by the look of the abbreviation. The key is a bare name list with no working definitions: sh. shell; d. c. double crochet; s. c. single crochet; tr. t. triple treble crochet; tn. turn; ch. chain; sk. skip; s. t. stitch; sts. stitches; Rep. repeat; * repeater; r. row; bel. below; cor. corner; sl. st. slip stitch; bet. between; l. loop; o. m. open mesh; s. m. solid mesh; lac. lacet stitch; d. t. double treble; opp. opposite; m. mesh; x cross stitch; s. sl. st. single slip stitch; pt. point; pf. puff stitch. Because the key defines nothing, the ladder was settled from the designs themselves. The book's d. c. is the modern US DOUBLE crochet: ten designs start their first d. c. “in 4th st. from hook”, the modern 3-chain turning convention, and the filet foundations follow the double-crochet formula of 3 chains a mesh plus 4. The book's d. t. (“double treble”) is the modern US TREBLE: it is started with ch 4, the modern treble turning chain, and No. 407's graduated point climbs sl st, s c, d c, d t without a missing rung. The book's tr. t. (“triple treble”) is by the same one-step shift the modern US double treble. So the short stitches carry modern US names while the treble names stand one step taller than modern US. Every book d. t. is written tr here and every tr. t. is written dtr; the book's d. c. is written dc unchanged. Note that Clark's 1923 book in this same collection abbreviates “D c” for a stitch that is the modern half double — the identical abbreviation means a different stitch there, which is why this book's ladder was checked against its own designs rather than carried across.
• Modernisation note: The book's wording is written in modern US form: tn. = turn; sk. = sk; bet. = between; bel. = below (“the row below”); cor. = corner; opp. = opposite; l./ls. = loop(s); p./ps. = picot(s); sh. = shell; r./rs. = row(s); sp. = sp. “Fasten” is written join or sl st according to what the row is doing, and “work thread up” is written as working up the side of the previous loop, which is what the book means by it.
• Modernisation note: The printed paragraphs are split into one row or step per line; stitch order and counts are unchanged. Section headings are added for navigation. Ordinal row names (“1st Row”, “2nd Row”) are written Row 1, Row 2. The OCR prints the ordinal “1st” variously as “Ist”, “ist” and “4st”, and prints “No.” as “No,” and “Noe,”; those quirks are kept in the excerpts and not in the rows.
• Modernisation note: The book names only a thread number for each design (“No. 40 Thread”), with no brand and no hook number anywhere in it. Those numbers are read as roughly equal to the modern crochet cotton sizes of the same number — approximate only.
• Modernisation note: No hook size is printed for any design in this book, so any metric hook suggested here is ours, read across from the thread size rather than from the page.
• 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 book names no colour anywhere, and the plates photograph as a plain light thread.
• Modernisation note: No yardage is printed for this design. The book gives ball counts for a few large pieces only (the table runner and the cover borders), and no edging on these pages is among them, so no yardage is given here.
• Modernisation note: Check: “1 sh. (of 5 d. c.)” in Row 5 is the book's own shell, defined on the spot as five double crochet, and it is the only place in this design where the key's “sh.” is used.
• Modernisation note: Check: the book's “fasten on the 4th r.” and “fasten on the very 1st r.” mean joining back to the numbered row of the same repeat, which is how the point is closed; the book's wording is followed closely.
• Modernisation note: Check: the OCR of Row 3 reads “1 sl. st. in 1st L”; the page image reads “1 sl. st. in 1st l.”, the book's abbreviation for loop.
• Modernisation note: Check: the OCR of Row 8 reads “ch. jie oe ee in 1st sp.”; the page image reads “ch. 1, 1 d. c. in 1st sp.”, which is the reading used above.
• Modernisation note: Check: the count “making 6 points” in Row 9 is the book's own and is kept, because it is the check on the repeat of the previous row.