Pansy Baby Cap in Irish Crochet (1915): vintage crochet pattern

Materials

• Size 40 to 60 mercerized cotton crochet thread — a suggestion only; no thread is printed for this design
• Steel crochet hook to suit the thread
• Paper and basting thread, for setting out the pansies and leaves
• Narrow ribbon, for the ties (the photograph shows a ribbon bow)
• Tapestry needle
• Hook: Start with 1.25 mm (US steel 10) — a suggestion only, as no hook is printed; change size to match the fineness of the ground in the photograph

Abbreviations (US terms)

ch

chain

sc

single crochet

dc

double crochet

tr

treble crochet

BLO

back loop only

st

stitch

sts

stitches

rnd

round

row

row

rep

repeat

sk

skip

lp

loop

Notes before you start

• Source: "Pansy Baby Cap", Jewel Crochet Book: A Collection of Unique and Useful Designs with Full Working Instructions, Miller-Clark Designing Company, St. Joseph, Missouri, 1915. Public domain in the USA.
• As printed — materials: Not given. Gauge: Not given.
• Modernisation note: Stitches converted by the book's own printed stitch key (“Key to Terms Used in this Book”), not by name — this book uses the older British-style naming, so its names do not mean what the same names mean today. Chain (ch) = ch. Slip stitch (slst), hook through a stitch, draw a stitch through that and the loop on the hook without throwing thread over = sl st. “Double” (d), hook through the work, draw a stitch through making two on the hook, thread over and draw through both = modern single crochet (sc). “Half treble” (htr), thread over, hook through, draw a stitch through, thread over and draw through all three = modern half double crochet (hdc). “Treble” (tr), thread over, hook through, draw a stitch through making three on the hook, then work off two and two = modern double crochet (dc). “Double treble” (dtr), thread over twice and cast off three times, two and two and two = modern treble (tr). “Triple treble” (ttr), thread over three times and cast off four times = modern double treble (dtr). So every printed tr becomes dc here, every printed dtr becomes tr, and every printed ttr becomes dtr.
• Modernisation note: Picot (p) is the book's own: chain 3, 4 or 5 as you like, then insert the hook in the first of those chains, thread over and draw through the chain stitch and the stitch on the hook at once (a slip stitch). It is written “picot” in full throughout, with the book's chain count wherever one is printed, because there is no picot abbreviation in this site's abbreviation list. Triple picot (tp) is the book's “three picots in succession”.
• Modernisation note: The book's shorthand is written out in modern US form: ch = ch, sl-st = sl st, d = sc, htr = hdc, tr = dc, dtr = tr, ttr = dtr, st(s) = st(s), R = Row or Round, j = join (with a slip stitch), bet = between, m (mesh) = the chain-1 space of the mesh ground, “miss” = sk, “thread over hook” = yo, “* all around” / “* from **” = rep from *. Ordinal row names (“1st R.”, “2nd R.”) are written Row 1, Row 2, or Round 1, Round 2 where the piece is worked in the round; where the book calls a circuit of a circular piece a “row”, the round reading is given in the heading and the change is noted.
• Modernisation note: The book prints each design as one unbroken paragraph; it is split here into one row, round or step per line, with stitch order and counts unchanged. Section headings in bold in the book (Rose, Seed Pods, Crown, Edge, and so on) are kept; any other heading is added for navigation and named as added.
• Modernisation note: Check: no thread size and no hook size are printed for this design. The thread and hook in the modern materials are a starting suggestion read from the scale of the photograph and from the sizes the book prints for its other designs; they are not from the book.
• Modernisation note: Thread is printed only as a number (“No. 60 thread”, “No. 20 thread”) with no brand and no yardage anywhere in the book. The modern equivalents given are approximations only: a size 60 or size 20 mercerized cotton crochet thread of the same size number. No yardage is printed for any design in this book, so none is given here.
• Modernisation note: Hooks are printed only as steel hook numbers (No. 9, No. 10, No. 11) with no diameters, so no exact metric size can be read from the book. The metric sizes given are approximate starting points read across to the modern US steel-hook scale, on which a higher number is finer; work a swatch and change hook size to match any printed measurement.
• Modernisation note: No stitch gauge is printed for any design in this book; work a swatch and match any printed measurement before starting.
• Modernisation note: The printed page is the authority for this transcription; every row was read from the page image, because the scanned text of this book is unusually broken. Where a digit could genuinely be read two ways it is flagged in a Check note below rather than guessed at.
• Modernisation note: The leaf rib is the book's “using only back part of sts”, which is working in the back loop only (blo).
• Modernisation note: This design is written in the Irish-crochet way, with the motifs made first and the ground filled in freehand between them. The directions are complete as printed but leave the number of pansies, the number of filling rows and the finished size to the maker; that is the book's own instruction, not an omission filled in here.
• Modernisation note: Check: the pansy directions call the five petals “leaves” and the ribbed foliage pieces are also called “Leaves”. The two are different pieces; the petals are the five worked from the ring, and the ribbed Leaves are the separate section.
• Modernisation note: Check: the pansy reads “Make 2 chains of 5sts across back of leaves”. The scan of the digit is not certain — it may be another small number — so check the length against the two petals it has to span before working the 4th and 5th petals.
• Modernisation note: Check: Edge Row 1 works “in every other eyelet”; the eyelets are the chain-3 spaces of the second runner chain.
• Modernisation note: Check: the colour is not printed; the cap photographs as white with a pale ribbon.
• Modernisation note: Finishing lines (taking out the basting, fastening off, weaving in ends, the ribbon ties) added; “Sew on pansies around front of cap” is the book's own.
• Modernisation note: Metric conversions added.