Historical Crochet from Victorian England

I have a hoard of crocheted doilies. These have come down to me from my great-aunts, my grandmothers, my great-grandmother. I keep them hidden away in boxes and drawers because there's nothing in my home or lifestyle that says "doily." I treasure them nonetheless.

My great-grandmother brought some of these doilies in a wagon (not covered) when she moved with her family from Tennessee to Oklahoma for the 1889 land run. The family lived for a time in a dugout, and then upgraded to a sod house, doilies and all. Much later, my grandmother had huge numbers of tiny doilies made especially to go under the glasses of iced tea on her bridge club tables in the 1940s. My other grandmother used her large pineapple-pattern ones as antimacassars on the arms and backs of her worn plush chairs until she died in 1960. However they were used, these lacy doilies provided grace notes to modest lives.

	Crocheted doily from Weldon's.

And Then There's Weldon's
I love looking through old volumes of Weldon's Practical Needlework to match up my doilies with the patterns in their dusty pages.  These nineteenth-century collections of needlecraft patterns offer a trove of insight into how our foremothers lived. Their clever, busy fingers made far more than doilies: caps, mittens, scarves, vests, underwear, toys, curtains, swags, tassels, fans, doorstops, child restrainers—on and on.

Crocheted child's pelisse from Weldon's.