PieceWork has often shared articles about the legion of wartime knitters throughout the world. Caring women who knitted and mended all matter of garments supported loved ones and strangers alike on the battle lines of wars throughout the centuries. A new PieceWork article by Dr. Ellie Reed focuses on a completely different aspect of that patriotic knitting.
Dr. Reed writes:
Less is understood about another form of patriotic knitting—producing items that would preserve the health, and even ensure the survival, of babies born to working-class mothers. Evidence of this can be found in the cheap, popular women’s magazines that targeted this demographic. As a knitting and magazine researcher who is also a mother, I take a personal interest in this content. I had long assumed that the main attraction of baby woolens was that they could be made cheaply. It never occurred to me that they might also have health benefits. Yet this is the message conveyed by mothercraft experts in My Weekly, Woman’s Weekly, and Woman’s Own magazines. Knitwear, they wrote, kept babies in good health. And during the war, mothers who brought up healthy babies performed a vital service to Britain.
A cover from Woman's Weekly, 1915. Reproduced by kind permission of the Knitting & Crochet Guild
We’re thrilled to share this fascinating article, “Wool, War, and Motherhood” in its entirety as a free download in the PieceWork library.
Learn more about World War I Knitting in the pages of PieceWork with articles, such as The Unlikely Knitters of World War I and Author, Chevalier, and Knitter Edith Wharton. Learn more more about the world of needlework and needlework in the world with PieceWork.