Chicago’s Sweater GIRLS: From World War I Knitters to 1970s Dept. Store Instructors

BeaR BraNd, The Windy City

Connection

• located in the Loop

• Paramount Knitting Co.

• Machine Knitting

Cheaper To Knit?• Doesn’t Pay to Knit Belt• “Article Can Be Bought

Cheaper Than It Can Be Made, and It is Generally Better.”

• “...And when the band was completed it was heavy, unporous and really compared unfavorably with the commercial knit band.”- Chicago Eagle, 9/9/1916

Helping the Cause

•Red Cross Knitting•wristlet, sleeveless

top pattern•Chicago Eagle,

2/23/1918•Knitted articles in

either gray or colored yarn

Yarn Shortage, WWI• “Utilize every moment.

Carry your knitting bags on the street cars or the farm wagons, or wherever you are.”

• “It is true yarn has been hard to get. But much of this shortage can be overcome if none of it is wasted for which a substitute can be found.”

• Chicago Eagle, 6/8/1918

Backstage At the Opera House, 1920s

Knitting Makes A Woman Smile

INstructions To Blow You

Away!

• Asmus Bradley Company

• Cartier-Bresson• Novelty Art Studios• Richardson

Manufacturing Company

• T. Buettner & Co.

Knitting Goes To Oak Street

Beach• Jantzen Knitting

Mills, Portland, OR

•Chicago Sunday Tribune ad, 1931

•100 percent wool swimsuits

Ready To Wear Knits

• Growing affluence

• Chicago Department stores

• defunct Walter Field Co.

• popular twin-sets

Knit 1, Purl 2, WWII• Knitting instructors critical

to wartime knitting• Movie stars photographed

in handknit sweaters• War-time rationing limited

dress lengths, embellishments

• Teens ‘drafted’ for the cause

Men Cast off 2!

• Boys learned to knit socks during World War II• Recuperating soldiers cast on cardigans, vests • “Doing Our Part”

1940s HandKnits• “Crochet

and Knitting for Every Woman: 300 Things To Make”

• People’s Book Club of Chicago, 1947

• knitting patterns, Chicago newspapers

Chicago Knitting Mills• Royal Knitting

Mills (1896)• South Side

Knitting Mills• Chicago

Knitting Mills

Sears, RoeBuck & Co.• yarn departments

at Marshall Field’s, Carson Pirie Scott and Sears Roebuck & Co. through late 1970s

• In-house knitting instructor

• books

The Long and Short of Corde

• also known as cordette or cordet

• popular in 1930s-1940s for crochet hats, handbags

• Hiawatha patterns

1937 British Pattern• Stitch in Time,

1970s edition• EverMatch

Sport and Sweater Yarn, 1970s vintage (?)