About us

Vintage to Modern Knits is a small shop run by a knitter, for knitters. I'm Lou Brown, and that knitter is me.

I'd always wanted to knit. My mum was a wonderful knitter, but I'm left-handed, and however many times she showed me, it never clicked. Then I ended up in hospital, and the woman in the next bed, who was 83, was knitting. Left-handed. I told her I'd always wanted to learn, and I spent the next three days sitting on the end of her bed while she taught me.

That's how I learnt to knit. Before I left, I'd taught some of the nurses on the ward too.

Why vintage? I love the shapes. The silhouettes of those old patterns, and the lines of 1950s tops in particular, are like nothing you can buy today. I wanted to knit them, in my size, in yarn I could actually buy. That turned out to be harder than it should be.

It started with a frustration most vintage knitters know. You find a beautiful pattern from 1952 and it comes in one size, for a yarn nobody has made in fifty years. Scaling the numbers up doesn't work. Do it blindly and the sleeves come out far too long and the neck big enough to climb through. Some apps that promise to resize patterns do exactly that.

So every design here is done the slow way.

I choose every pattern myself. Each one comes from an original pattern from the 1940s to the 1980s, and I look for designs that are still lovely to wear today.

Each one is rebuilt from the original instructions. Before anything is resized, we work out the garment the designer actually meant: its ease, its shape, how it's put together, the neckline, the sleeves, the finishing. Every count in the original is checked, and misprints are noted and fixed. (There usually are a few.)

Then it's graded, not stretched. Bust, armholes, upper arms and lengths each grow at their own rate, the way real bodies do. The calculations are checked for every size from US 4 to 24 (UK 8 to 28), so a 52 in bust gets a neckline and sleeves that fit, not just a bigger number.

I approve every pattern before it goes in the shop. If a yarn would spoil a design, we don't offer it. Better to say no than sell you something that won't look right.

Most of the photographs come from the original patterns. Some I've cleaned up or coloured so you can see the garment properly.

And if you get stuck on a row, a real knitter will read your email and help. Email us at support@vintagetomodernknits.com.

My other sites

• Knitters Notions is where I share the knitting tools and bits I think are brilliant.
• The Sick List helps people find their way through a stay in a British hospital.
• Yoke Folk, my own yoke sweater designs, is coming soon.