vintage 1948 'Prince Charles' bootie & bonnet pattern

   

Today we stay in the 40's, with a Royal baby bootie pattern!
It's hard to imagine, but Prince Charles (now age 64 and already a grandfather) was once the long-awaited-for firstborn Royal baby to queen Elizabeth. Just like nowadays with Royal families, it was a hype to watch every step of him and a dream of mothers to copy every piece of clothing he wore for their own baby. Below Elizabeth and the 19-weeks old Charles in an official photo-session (he is wearing an Irish linen and Irish crocheted frock, that was once worn by his mother):


In 1948, a short month after the birth of H.R.H. Prince Charles Philip Arthur George the AWW published a matinee jacket pattern which is told to be the first one baby Charles wore. (if you wonder: the picot edges are crochet) The pattern has larger holes and probably looks more stretched out than the pattern you get when following the instructions. You could use a yarn over instead of knitting 2 stitches in one for a more lace-y appearance, but for the booties it would give less elasticity imo.

"A matinee jacket of this design made by Miss Ada Rates, one of the nannies who made garments for the layette presented to Princess Elizabeth by the British Nursery Nurses Association, was selected to be the little Prince's first jacket. So many inquiries were made about the jacket before the Royal baby was born that directions were made available for other young mothers."

A few months later a  reader designed her own version of a matching bonnet and booties which uses the same stitch to complete the set. The AWW-readers were very happy to complete their own 'royal' set!
   

material & sizing:
The suggested tension is: 7,5sts=1in (30sts=10cm). As usual, I made mine with a fingering weight yarn, metric size 3 needles and a tension of 28 sts to 10cm (7sts=1in) The finished size is 12 cm from heel to toe.


construction:
The construction is bottom-up. The foot is knitted in garter-stitch.
The toe shaping is done by increasing from the middle part of the garther stitch sole. The sides are shaped by using my favorite method: decreasing alongside the instep. This way there is no need to pick up stitches. After 5 repeats of the fancy stitch pattern the top is finished by a short ribbed cuff. The bootie is seemed along the sole and the back.


The toe is softly rounded:
   

modification:

• for the ribbed edge you need to increase one stitch at the end of the first K2, P2 row (=48 sts)

fancy stitch - error in pattern!


This is why it is handy to test these patterns!
While knitting I discovered an important error: the 'fancy stitch' is instructions are wrong! I took a look at the original article with the matinee jacket pattern and this is definitely the right version:

• R1: knit
• R2: purl
• R3: K1 *K1, M1, K2TOG* K2
• R4: K2 *K1, M1, K2TOG* K1

(the K1 and K2 at the ends needs to be added because of the total amount of stitches is 47 and one pattern block consists of 4 stitches.)

abbreviations for beginners:
k = knit
p = purl
m1= make one by knitting twice in one stitch
w.fwd = wool forward or yarn over
k 2 tog = knit two stitches together
slip1 = slip one stitch over from left needle to right needle without knitting

the original pattern:
error in instructions of fancy stitch, given at bonnet! for correction see above.