Complete Home Knitting Illustrated - Easy to Understand Instructions for Making Garments for the Fam

Wartime Britain knitted its own wardrobe, and here is the manual that showed how - over two hundred photographs and diagrams, and a plan for everything from stockings to a tailored shirt.

Margaret Murray and Jane Koster put together Complete Home Knitting Illustrated when wool was rationed and remaking mattered more than buying. Their promise in the introduction is a plain one: nearly every garment in a wardrobe can be produced from a minimum of yarn and two needles. The instructions were written for the raw beginner as much as for the practised hand, with photographs and diagrams at each stage.

Two further sections give the book its particular character - one on joining knitted pieces to woven cloth, and one on turning worn-out clothing into something wearable again. The designs, among them ribbed jerseys, open-rib stockings and a roll-collar sweater worked in two colours, are still traced by knitters reconstructing 1940s dress today.

This edition features:

• A full reprint of the manual, with over two hundred photographs and working diagrams
• Step-by-step guidance for the raw beginner, from casting on through shaping, sleeves and finishing
• Designs for the whole household, among them ribbed jerseys, open-rib stockings and a tailored shirt
• A section on combining knitted panels with woven cloth, and another on remaking worn garments
• A practical record of wartime thrift, when wool was rationed and every ounce of yarn counted