Edwardian Lady Scarf – Inside Crochet Issue 37

Happy New Year! How gorgeous is this photo? The model looks like the enchanting Audrey Tautou walking on the banks of the Seine – sultry – chic and wearing my scarf! My copy of Inside Crochet arrived on Christmas Eve and it was a lovely early pressie. I think the photos in this issue are amongst my favourite images of my designs.

I did wear this scarf on Sunday with a new black cardigan I had received at Christmas. I am afraid I didn’t quite embody the Gallic Chic of this gorgeous model..but in my head I was strutting my stuff along the Left Bank.

When I can, I try to give you a little background to where the ideas spring from for various commissions. This design has been knocking around in my head  for a while. Last year I was really inspired by the embroidered dresses which appeared on the catwalk. I think ironically this image was captured in Autumn 2011 at the Paris Shows. It was the same image which prompted me to make my Flori T. I am a huge fan of botanical prints, but if I am honest I think there was something wedged in my brain from my childhood. If you grew up in the 80’s then you cannot forget that there was a decade of fascination with the book ‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’. The nature notes of Edwardian school teacher Edith Holden were posthumously published in 1977 and became a best seller, with ever increasing merchandise spin-offs. There was even a period when you could get tissues printed with her watercolour illustrations.

As a young girl I was delighted by the watercolours in this book and those of Beatrix Potter. Thinking about the design for this scarf I reached for a book which I knew I had kept since childhood. I knew it had a number of flower images which I had gazed at as a child.

When I opened the book for the first time in two decades, I discovered something which I was completely forgotten. It was like the young girl had caught up with my older self. Isn’t it funny that sometimes we forgot who was inside us all the time. Now I can remember taking my gift voucher and very deliberately choosing this book as my prize, but until researching for this scarf design, it was something that had laid very dormant in my memory.

So these are the images which I was look for:

Here they are in crochet form:

Flower embellishments may not be your thing. But you could use part of this design to decorate a hair-clip or even as a corsage. I wanted to lift the design by adding a touch of sparkle with beads and sequins. It is easy to over-do these things, but just a little added sparkle does add a little glamour to the piece. A technique I really like is combining the matt look of the wool in the main part of the scarf with a 4ply cotton edge, which has a silky sheen. The  contrast of those two textures is very pleasing and seems to give the scarf a better drape.

If you get a chance to check out the new issue of Inside Crochet it is well worth a look. I will try to do my top picks of patterns later in the week. The combination of Claire Montgomerie’s styling and the photography of Britt Spring is really chic.