Three-Medallion Towel Band and Edge No. 3158 (1916): vintage crochet pattern

Materials

• Size 30 mercerized cotton crochet thread — approximate; the book prints only its own trade name and size number
• Steel crochet hook
• Tapestry needle for the ends
• A towel to sew the medallions and edge onto
• Hook: Start with a 1.25 mm (US steel 8) hook — approximate, and ours: the book prints “Crochet Hook, size 11”, a number on the maker's own scale that does not map onto modern steel sizes. Change size until the work lies flat.

Abbreviations (US terms)

ch

chain

sl st

slip stitch

sc

single crochet

dc

double crochet

tr

treble crochet

sp

space

ch-sp

chain space

st

stitch

sts

stitches

sk

skip

ps

puff stitch

rep

repeat

row

row

rnd

round

Notes before you start

• Source: "No. 3158 — Towel" (3158), Royal Society Crochet Lessons, Vol. 1, No. 7, H. E. Verran Company, Inc., New York, 1916. Public domain in the USA.
• As printed — materials: ROYAL SOCIETY White CORDICHET, size 30, 1 ball; Crochet Hook, size 11; A towel to trim. Gauge: Not given.
• Modernisation note: Stitches are converted from the key this book prints itself, not from the date. The key is on book page 3, headed “CROCHET STITCHES”, facing a photographic plate of the same fifteen stitches on book page 2, and it defines every height in full. Single crochet is “insert needle in last chain and pull thread through, thus having two loops on needle. Wind thread once over needle and pull through the two loops” — the modern US single. Half double crochet is named and abbreviated separately, “wind thread once around needle, insert into chain and pull loop through. Wind thread around needle again and pull through three loops at once” — the modern US half double. Double crochet is “wind thread once around needle. Insert needle into chain and pull through; this leaves three loops on needle. Wind thread once around needle and pull through two. Wind thread again over needle and pull through two” — the modern US double, and because the book names the half double separately it cannot be the half double that Clark's 1923 book in another part of this library means by the same-looking abbreviation. Treble crochet is “made same way as Double Crochet, only at first wind thread twice over needle and pull thread through three times — two and two and two” — the modern US treble, written tr below; double treble takes three wraps and is written dtr. The key also defines the filet mesh as “chain two stitches, skip two stitches, one double crochet into next stitch” and a shell as “five double crochet in one stitch”. One trap in the printed abbreviation table on that page: it glosses “sp.” as spoke, not space, so no bare “sp.” anywhere in this book has been read as a space.
• Modernisation note: The book's wording is written in modern US form: “ch.” = ch; “s.c.” = sc; “h.d.c.” = hdc; “d.c.” = dc; “t.c.” and “tr.c.” = tr; “d.tr.c.” = dtr; “sl. st.” = sl st; “sk.” = sk; “p.” = picot; “m.” = mesh. Ordinal row names (“1st Row”, “2nd Row”) are written Row 1, Row 2; the book's “repeat from *” is written rep from *; and “finish off” is written fasten off. The book's own word “hole” for the gap it works into is kept, because that is the word it uses and it never abbreviates it.
• Modernisation note: The printed paragraphs are split into one row or step per line; stitch order and counts are unchanged. Section headings are the book's own where it prints them and ours where it does not. The OCR of this scan is rough — it prints “d.c.” variously as “dc”, “de” and “dic”, sets row labels as “lst Bow”, “Qnd Bow” and “8rd Row”, and drops words at the column breaks. Those quirks are kept in the excerpts and not in the rows.
• Modernisation note: The book names its threads by the maker's own trade name and colour number — Royal Society Cordichet in a stated size, sometimes with a colour number such as No. 3012. Those colour numbers were shade codes in the maker's own range and cannot be matched to any modern shade card, so they are recorded as printed and not converted. The stated thread size is read as roughly equal to the modern crochet cotton size of the same number — approximate only.
• Modernisation note: The book prints a hook number for most designs, but the number belongs to the maker's own scale rather than to any modern one, so it is recorded above as printed and the metric suggestion below 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 a towel trimming, so its length is set by the towel 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 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: the picots in this design are printed as a bare “1 p.” with no chain count of their own. The book's printed key on book page 3 defines a picot as a chain 4 caught back into the first chain, but it defines it inside a worked example with single crochet on either side, so the picots are left unnumbered above rather than given a count the design itself does not print.
• Modernisation note: Check: Row 5 of the centre medallion joins two trebles together — “1 tr.c. around next ch. 3, 1 tr.c. around following ch. 3, finish both together” — which is the book's own wording for a two-legged cluster, and it is kept above.
• Modernisation note: Check: the medallions are joined to each other picot to picot, three at a time, and the book prints no measurement for the finished band of three. It also does not say how the medallions are attached to the towel; the photograph on book page 40 shows them set into the linen with the embroidery worked around them.
• Modernisation note: Check: the edge is the only part of this design with a stated length, and the book leaves that to the worker — “make ch. for length required”.
• Modernisation note: Check: the tall stitches of the centre medallion's Row 5 and the medium medallion's Row 3 are the book's t.c., the modern US treble by the printed key; every other tall stitch in the design is its d.c., the modern US double crochet.
• Modernisation note: The line about sewing the pieces to the towel is ours; the book prints them as separate pieces and does not say how they are attached.