Smiling Buttons · 1980s Hand-Knitted Fair Isle Baby Cardigan
Wool yarn · hand-knitted Fair Isle colourwork · cream ground · smiley-face buttons · handmade, no label · 1980s to 1990s · AU size 4-5, approx 4-5 years
Cream wool banded with fine Fair Isle colourwork in red, pink, green, and blue, fastened up the front with smiley-face buttons. Fair Isle is one of the more technically demanding hand-knitting traditions: you carry multiple colours across each row, the unused threads running along the back, which means you are always managing several strands at once and must keep an even tension across all of them or the finished fabric pulls and distorts.
No label, 1980s to 1990s. To do Fair Isle well at the small scale of a child's cardigan takes a real knitter. This person was a real knitter: the colourwork is even and bright throughout, no distortion, no loose threads at the back. The smiley buttons are the detail that makes this completely loveable, a warm, funny choice that dates this happily to the late twentieth century and is impossible to resist.
A piece that will be remembered.
Care
Hand wash only, cool, with a wool-safe detergent. Press water out gently in a towel. Dry flat in shape away from heat so the wool keeps its body and does not felt.
More on looking after vintage pieces in our care guide.
Size
Measured flat: length 35cm, chest 36cm, waist 34cm, sleeve length 34cm. Fits approximately AU size 4-5, around 4 to 5 years.
Our size guide explains how vintage sizing is read here.
Condition
Very good. The Fair Isle colourwork is even and bright, the smiley-face buttons all present.
Our condition lexicon explains the grades we use.
Before it reaches you
Someone loved this before you did, and I try to honour that properly. Each piece is hand washed, or cleaned in the way that the fabric permits, then steamed until it softens and straightens and feels newly attended to. Wherever a button was missing, it has been replaced with a vintage one from my long-kept collection. Wherever a hem had given way, I fix it by hand. By the time it leaves this room it is genuinely clean, pressed, whole, and looked over one final time before I let myself believe it is ready. Not restored. Not made new. Just returned to a state where it can be loved again, by someone who was not there the first time.
Fair Isle is knitted with several colours held at once, all their loose threads running secretly along the inside, so the back of this cardigan is a small hidden tangle of everything it chose not to show. Down the front, a row of smiley faces has agreed to do the showing instead, and keeps it up regardless of the weather or the mood of whoever is inside. A cardigan that grins on purpose is a difficult thing to stay unhappy within, and children have tested this thoroughly. The colours were chosen in the order of a good day and fastened in that order every morning.