Weldon's Practical Needlework, Volume 7

If you are knitting for theatre, this book is indispensible. If you like historical or vintage garments, or are a designer, or if you subscribe to Piecework Magazine and like their vintage needlework articles, this is for you. This volume has great baby booties, petticoats, a ribwarmer (Immigrant's Jacket) a toy crochet elephant that is spectacular (I mean with palanquin on top, or at least a mahoot's blanket, very nice) and some plaid stockings for boys that are beautiful. For crocheter and knitters, this is a treasure trove of interesting patterns. There is also embroidery including church embroidery, less interesting to me as a non-embroidery person, but could be interesting to the needlework-lover. There are no charts, all instructions are written out, so if you are a chart-lover, this is a bit difficult but if you HATE charts, you will love the line by line instructions. The print is the archaic style font as are the black and white photos, so it's very vintage looking but the elephant is worth the price of admission.

I love to create clothing from "true" vintage knitting and crocheting patterns, which are very difficult to find in the US; and when I do nail down a source, the pattern is moldy, portions of a magazine for a particularly nice pattern have been carefully removed (as though I wouldn't notice the pagination moving from page 42 to page 59), and then the source becomes incognito.Part of the fun is "translating" the old-fashioned terms, and imagining why a horse would need knitted ear-muffs! Never mind, my English-Irish grandmother, still sharp at age 93 and the one who taught me these womanly skills, will explain the next time I visit.

If you haven't begun collecting the Weldon's series yet...... Start with this book. It is SO inspirational! It features hundreds of patterns in crochet, knitting, and other needlearts, PLUS has 2 sections that I'd never even heard of before: Crinkled Tissue Paper Work and Japanese curtain work. Though I have to admit that working the patterns is "work" because wording, tools, and abbreviations have changed, that didn't deter my enthusiasm at all. It is so much fun seeing how needleworker's used to do the crafts that I love so much.The book is full of "practical" things to create, too. I had no idea that so many forms of clothing were knit: everything from chest protectors to anti-rheumatic kneecaps. And the edgings and border patterns are immense. You will never run out of things to put edgings and borders on after reading this collection.This series is not just for re-inactors, but a very useful set of references for modern knitters as well.