The Original "Snowflake Doily"

If you're new here - hello! - the following relates to my Cut-Glass Snowflake Doily post.

The pattern has been identified! Susan P, a member of Celt's Vintage Crochet Yahoo group, was the first to spot it. She was flipping through her collection, look for something else, when it jumped off the page at her.

The original pattern, called simply "Snowflake Doily", was published in - drum roll, please............
"The Super Lacecrafts Collection - Crochet, Tatting and Knitted Lace", an Anchor/Coats publication (#17552 in the US, I believe; #1324 in the UK).


As soon as I heard from Susan I shot over to eBay and, would you believe it, there was one copy for sale here in the UK. I debated over whether I should buy it for, oh, a good 2 seconds. For one thing, I really wanted to compare my version to the original.

The disappointing news for me is that the pattern was published in 1984 (UK edition) so this lovely little doily isn't "vintage" after all. Congratulations to whoever designed it (the booklet doesn't say) for achieving "the look".


So, how does my pattern stack up? Well, apart from almost every one of my chains being shorter, the rest seems to match. I put my short chains down to two things - 1) the doily I worked from was rather tightly crocheted. As you can see from the picture above, the original was intended to be more open in appearance; and 2) I chain quite loosely, so where the chains were completely hidden by stitches and I had to guess at their number, I guessed low.

For those of you interested in trying a "looser" version, here are the chain length amendments:

To begin: Ch 6 Ch 9
Rnd 1) no change
Rnd 2) ch 8 ch 13
Rnd 3-8) ch 5 ch 7
Rnd 9) in order of appearance: ch 5 ch 7, ch 9 ch 13, ch 2 ch 3, ch 4 ch 5
Rnd 10) ch 12 ch 13
Rnd 11) in order of appearance: ch 10 ch 15, ch 8 ch 9, and the picot should be ch 4 ch 3 - the only time I had more chains!
Rnd 12) in order of appearance: ch 4 ch 5, ch 12 ch 13, and this time the picot should be ch 4 ch 5.

Bear these changes in mind when you are told to work into the ch-whatever space of the previous row.

And look! There's a smaller companion doily:


For this, work the first four rounds as for the large doily, then ch 7, *in ch5 lp (8 dc, ch4-picot, 7 dc) ch 3, (tr, ch 5, tr) in tr, ch 3, rpt from * around, ending omit last tr, slst in 4th ch of beg ch7. FO

Note that I've stuck to my "short chain" style here, in keeping with my pattern. The booklet has ch 7 instead of ch 5, and ch5 picots.