Grace Coolidge’s Great-Grandmother’s Counterpane

The Sunday, November 21, 1926, New York Herald Tribune and other newspapers published the pattern for this knitted bedspread calling simply for “[c]otton yarn” and “[s]teel needles, number 17.” Mrs. Coolidge’s notes on the pattern recommend using long steel needles so that “the entire block may be knitted with two needles by using corks or sealing wax on the ends to prevent the stitches slipping off the needles.” The needles called for in the original are no longer made. They would have measured between a modern size 0000 (1.25 mm) and a 00000 (1.0 mm).