Leaf Edge for Bath Towels No. 2 (1916): vintage crochet pattern

Materials

• Size 5 perle cotton in white and in a colour to match the towel — the book prints only “Perle cotton No. 5”, with no brand
• Steel or fine aluminium crochet hook
• Embroidery needle for the French knots
• A bath towel to trim
• Hook: Start with a 1.75 mm (US steel 4–5) hook — approximate, and ours: the book prints no hook size for this design. Change size until the edge lies flat.

Abbreviations (US terms)

ch

chain

sl st

slip stitch

sc

single crochet

dc

double crochet

sp

space

ch-sp

chain space

st

stitch

sts

stitches

sk

skip

sh

shell

rep

repeat

row

row

Notes before you start

• Source: "Edges for Bath Towels, No. 2" (2), The Elite Instruction Book, Pierre C. Brin, Chicago, Ill., 1916. Public domain in the USA.
• As printed — materials: Perle cotton No. 5, white, same in color to match towel. Gauge: Not given.
• Modernisation note: Stitches are converted from this book's own designs, not from a printed key and not from the date. The book prints NO abbreviation list anywhere: all sixteen printed pages are design pages, and none of them carries a key, a glossary or a stitch definition, so the ladder had to be read off the directions. The book names only three heights — s c, d c and t c — and nothing taller than t c appears in it. s c is the modern US single crochet. d c is the modern US double crochet: nine designs open a row “1 d c into the fourth st” (book pages 9, 10 and 11), the modern convention of a 3-chain turning chain worked into the 4th chain, and the filet foundation on book page 7 chains 42 for “1 d c into the 8th st, 11 sp”, three chains a mesh, which is the double-crochet filet formula. t c is the modern US treble, the next step up, and is written tr below; the book opens it with 5 chains rather than the modern 4, which is its own generosity and not a taller stitch — the Yoke for Corset Cover No. 2 joins its opening “8 ch sts” at the 5th chain, and the book has no fourth name to give the step above t c, while its graduated shell “1 s c, 1 d c, 6 t c, 1 d c, 1 s c” (book page 10, No. 5) climbs single to double to t c with no rung between. Note that Clark's 1923 book in this same collection abbreviates “D c” for a stitch that is the modern half double — the identical-looking abbreviation means a different stitch there, which is why this book's ladder was checked against its own pages rather than carried across.
• Modernisation note: The book's wording is written in modern US form: “ch sts” = ch; “s c” = sc; “d c” = dc; “t c” = tr; “sl st” = sl st; “sps” = spaces; “p” = picot; “gr” = group; “sk” = sk. “Break thread” is written fasten off, and “catch” is written join or work into according to what the row is doing. Ordinal row names (“First Row”, “Second Row”) are written Row 1, Row 2, and the book's “repeat *” is written rep from *.
• 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. The OCR of this scan is rough: it prints “d c” variously as “dc”, “de”, “d ec” and “d ¢”, sets “1 s c” as “1s c”, prints “No.” as “No,” and drops whole words at the column breaks. Those quirks are kept in the excerpts and not in the rows.
• Modernisation note: The book names a thread by maker's number only (for example “No. 30 mercerized crochet cotton”), with no brand. 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 this design. The only hook numbers anywhere in the book are the “No. 5 steel hook” and “No. 3 steel hook” given for the Cake and Sherbet Serving Set on book page 2, which is not among these patterns, 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 stitch count per inch anywhere. Work a sample and change hook size until the piece lies flat.
• Modernisation note: Check: this is an edging, so its length is set by the piece it trims; the book prints no length and leaves the number of repeats to the worker.
• Modernisation note: No finished measurement is printed for this design.
• Modernisation note: No yardage is printed for this design. The book gives ball counts for a few pieces only, and where it does they are recorded above as printed; no length in yards or metres appears anywhere in the book.
• Modernisation note: Check: “adding 1 d c on each row, for 6 rows” is the book's whole increase rule, and it is printed with its own worked example inside Row 2 — the first leaf is 4 dc and the next is 5 dc in the same row, so the count grows by one each time the leaf is repeated. Where exactly the added stitch falls is not printed beyond that, and nothing has been added here to place it.
• Modernisation note: Check: the OCR of Row 1 reads “1 dc, 8 ch sts, * 1 deca, 2 ch sts”. The page image (images/p-12.jpg) reads “1 d c, 3 ch sts, * 1 d c, 2 ch sts”, and 3 is the count used above.
• Modernisation note: Check: the French knot is embroidery, not crochet, and the book gives it no count beyond one to a leaf.
• Modernisation note: Check: the book prints two threads for this design, white and a colour to match the towel, but does not say which row takes which; only the French knots are explicitly “of the color”.
• Modernisation note: The line about sewing the edge to the towel is ours; the book prints the edge as a strip and does not say how it is attached.