Crocheted Bootees in Silk and Wool Afghan Stitch No. 14-12-4 (1915): vintage crochet pattern

Materials

• Baby-weight (CYC 1, fingering) soft wool in place of the book's Lady Wool — ours, read across from the book's own note that Lady Wool was chosen for its special softness for baby garments
• A soft fine 2-ply baby wool in place of the book's crochet wool, which the book itself equates with twofold Saxony, Zephyr Shetland and Superfine Crochet
• 6-strand embroidery floss or a soft rayon/silk embroidery thread in place of the book's rope silk and twisted silk, for the silk stitches worked into the fabric and for the rambler-rose and cross-stitch embroidery
• A fine crochet silk or about a size 10 cotton crochet thread for the silk edges
• Ribbon and narrow lace as the design calls for, and lining silk where the book lines the piece
• Hook: Start with 3.5 mm (US E-4) for the wool and about 1.65 mm (US steel 7) for the silk edging — ours, approximate. The book prints only maker's hook numbers. Change size until the fabric is soft but not loose.

Abbreviations (US terms)

ch

chain

sc

single crochet

dc

double crochet

sl st

slip stitch

st

stitch

sts

stitches

sk

skip

rep

repeat

row

row

rnd

round

yo

yarn over

lp

loop

BLO

back loop only

inc

increase

dec

decrease

Notes before you start

• Source: "Crocheted Bootees in Silk and Wool Afghan Stitch No. 14-12-4" (No. 14-12-4), The Priscilla Baby Book No. 1: A Collection of Babies' Garments in Knitting and Crochet with Directions for Making (by Elsa Barsaloux), The Priscilla Publishing Company, 85 Broad Street, Boston, Mass., 1915. Public domain in the USA.
• As printed — materials: ½ skein white Lady Wool.; 6 skeins colored rope silk.; 2 skeins colored twisted silk.; Amber crochet-hook No. 4.; Steel crochet-hook No. 8.; 2 yards ribbon No. 3 to trim.. Gauge: Not given.
• Modernisation note: Stitches are converted by this book's own key (“Explanation of Stitches”, book page 3, image p-05.jpg), not by stitch name. The key is unusually explicit and settles the naming without guesswork. It defines “Double (d)” as: having a loop on the hook, put hook through work, draw thread through work making two loops on the hook, thread over again and through both loops — and it then says in so many words that this stitch has been called “single crochet”, especially in wool crochet, but that for the sake of standardising the terms it is called “double”, after the custom of workers in Irish crochet, eliminating entirely the name “single”. So the book's d is the modern US single crochet, stated outright rather than inferred. “Half Treble (h t)” takes one thread over, hook through work, thread over and through work giving three stitches on the hook, then thread over and through all three at once — the modern US half double crochet. “Treble (t)” takes one thread over, three stitches on the hook, off two and off two — the modern US double crochet. “Double Treble (d t)” takes thread over twice, four stitches on the hook, worked off two at a time — the modern US treble. “Long Treble (l t) or Triple Treble (t t)” takes thread over three times, five stitches on the hook, worked off by twos — the modern US double treble, with the key's own note that “l t” is used for anything longer than d t and the number of loops is then stated in the design. So this 1915 Priscilla book uses the older British heights, exactly like the 1913, 1915 and 1916 Priscilla crochet books in this repository and unlike the 1911 Priscilla Filet book: throughout this transcription the book's d is written sc, its h t is written hdc, its t is written dc, its d t is written tr, and its l t or t t is written dtr.
• Modernisation note: Afghan stitch is the book's own (same key, book page 3): make a chain the length required, draw a loop through each chain stitch until all are on the hook — that is the first half of the first row; the second half is thread over, draw through one stitch, then thread over and draw through two stitches repeatedly until one loop is left on the hook. The first half of the second row draws a loop through each of the upright stitches, and the second half is like the second half of the first row; the first and second halves together count as one row. The key also prints the book's binding off (insert hook in the second stitch, wool over, draw through the upright stitch and the loop on the hook, repeating until all stitches are bound off) and its increasing (at the start of a row draw a loop through the chain stitch between two upright stitches, and at the end draw a loop through the chain stitch between the last two upright stitches). This is the stitch modern workers call Tunisian simple stitch, worked with a long hook; the book calls the tool a crochet-hook throughout and so does this transcription.
• Modernisation note: Fancy stitch (f) is the book's own (same key, book page 3): having a stitch on the hook, draw a loop through the work, thread over and through one loop, thread over and through two loops. It is the book's name for a firm elastic stitch used through the sweaters, bootee legs and kimono sweater, and it is written out in full here rather than abbreviated.
• Modernisation note: The book's shorthand is written in modern US form: ch = ch, sl = sl st, d = sc, h t = hdc, t = dc, d t = tr, l t and t t = dtr, p = picot, st(s) = st(s), sp = space. “Miss” is written sk; “wool over” and “silk over” are written yo, with the material named where the design changes between wool and silk mid-stitch; “repeat from *” is written rep from *. Ordinal row names (“1st Row”, “2d row”, “3d row”) are written Row 1, Row 2, Row 3, and where the book calls a circuit worked in the round a “row”, it is written Rnd and the change is noted.
• Modernisation note: The printed directions run as solid paragraphs under one DIRECTIONS heading per design; they are split here into one row, round or step per line, with the book's own sub-headings (Yoke, Body, Sleeves, Cuffs, Collar, Edge and so on) kept as section headings. Stitch order and counts are unchanged.
• Modernisation note: The scanned text of this book carries the usual optical-reading slips, and where a figure below looks odd it has been read back against the page image: the scan's “4o”, “3o”, “2oth”, “6oth” and the like are 40, 30, 20th and 60th, its “rst”, “ist” and “Ist” are 1st, its “gth” is 4th or 9th according to the sequence, its “tr” in a stitch count is 11, and its “Sth” is 8th. The row numbers below follow the sequence the printed page actually shows.
• Modernisation note: Materials are listed exactly as printed. The book's own IMPORTANT note (book page 3) explains two of its names: Lady Wool was chosen for its special softness for baby garments and may be found in shops under the names Lady Alice, Lady Jane, Ladyfair, Lady Grey and Lady Betty; and “the crochet wool mentioned is the same as the soft fine twofold Saxony, Zephyr Shetland, or Shetland Zephyr and Superfine Crochet”. Rope silk and twisted silk are the book's embroidery silks; crochet silk is its fine thread for the silk edges.
• Modernisation note: Hooks are printed only as period maker's numbers — bone, celluloid and amber hooks No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 for the wool, and steel hooks No. 6 to No. 9 for the silk — with no diameters, and those numbers do not map onto the modern scale. Any metric size given in the modern materials is ours and is a starting point only.
• Modernisation note: No gauge is printed for this design, or for any design in the book. The book's own caution (book page 3) is the only guidance it gives: when wool is used the crocheting should not be too tight, nor loose enough to be sloppy, but loose enough to show the beauty of the wool, and all the garments were made at that tension. Work a sample and change hook size to suit.
• Modernisation note: No yardage is estimated. The book counts skeins, spools and yards of ribbon and lace, but never prints a skein or spool length, so there is no printed basis for a yardage figure and none is invented here.
• Modernisation note: No finished measurement is printed for this design. The book gives sizes for almost nothing it makes — the pieces are infant-sized and are worked to the stitch and row counts printed.
• Modernisation note: The book's own closing note is kept as a finishing step because it is a working instruction, not a description: the silk is never broken off, but carried on the back of the work between silk stitches.
• Modernisation note: Check: the scan prints the vamp's third row as “ad row” and its fifth as “5th row”; the sequence of afghan-stitch and silk rows makes them Rows 3 and 5, and they are numbered so here.