Bestway Knitting Patterns: The Story of One of Britain’s Great Pattern-Publishing Names

For many vintage knitters, the name Bestway is instantly recognisable. Its compact pattern leaflets, economical designs and distinctively styled covers survive in large numbers, particularly from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

Yet Bestway wasn't originally a wool manufacturer nor an independent design house in the modern sense. It was a publishing brand connected to one of Britain’s largest magazine businesses, and its history belongs as much to Fleet Street and women’s periodicals as it does to knitting.

The surviving record is incomplete, especially concerning the brand’s final years. However, museum collections, specialist archives and academic research allow us to reconstruct much of its development.

Bestway began with paper sewing patterns

Bestway appears to have originated within the fashion-publishing operations of The Amalgamated Press, the vast British periodical company established by newspaper proprietor Alfred Harmsworth.

In 1908, Amalgamated Press organised a specialist department for fashion publications. Its titles included Fashions for All, Home Fashions, Children’s Dress, Mab’s Fashions and the Bestway Series. Bestway was therefore active as a paper-pattern business well before its familiar knitting leaflets appeared.

The early Bestway operation was substantial. Dress historian Fiona Hackney, writing in The Culture of Sewing (1999), describes Bestway’s dress-pattern operation as employing around 100 staff, with a factory and production plant in Whitefriars Street, London, and a retail outlet in Oxford Street. Hackney notes that as many as 20 million Bestway patterns were circulated annually during the company’s peak.

Those figures relate principally to Bestway’s dressmaking-pattern operation, rather than knitting leaflets alone. They nevertheless show that Bestway was not a minor craft label. It was part of a large, highly organised system for translating current fashions into affordable patterns for home use.

A publishing brand rather than a traditional pattern company

Bestway’s relationship with Amalgamated Press magazines was central to its success.

Unlike some pattern companies that marketed their products largely through shops or dedicated catalogues, Bestway could draw upon the readership of numerous mass-market women’s magazines. A dress or knitted garment might be shown editorially in a magazine, while readers were directed towards the corresponding Bestway pattern.

This blurred the boundary between editorial content and retailing. The magazines created demand for new fashions, while Bestway supplied readers with the means to reproduce them at home.

One former Woman’s Weekly employee recalled that Bestway functioned as a service department for Amalgamated Press publications. Magazine editors could select existing Bestway designs or commission a special style, after which Bestway’s staff prepared the commercial pattern. The relationship with Woman’s Weekly was particularly close.

Bestway’s growth should therefore be understood as part of a much wider transformation in British domestic fashion. Affordable weekly magazines were teaching readers what to wear, while mail-order and shop-bought patterns made those styles attainable.

Bestway and the rise of home knitting

Bestway was initially best known for sewing patterns, but knitting and crochet became increasingly important to the brand.

The Knitting & Crochet Guild reports that whilst the Bestway sewing patterns and knitting-and-crochet books were being published during the 1930s, its individual knitting-pattern leaflets appear to have begun around 1939.

That date fits the wider development of commercial knitting patterns in Britain. By the 1920s and 1930s, knitted jumpers and cardigans had become fashionable everyday garments rather than merely practical underwear or sportswear. Women’s magazines devoted growing amounts of space to knitting, and the sale of associated patterns became a valuable source of revenue.

The surviving Bestway range includes both numbered booklets and individual leaflets. Some publications contained several designs, while others concentrated on a single jumper, cardigan, accessory or children’s garment.

Collectors should be cautious about using pattern numbers alone to assign precise dates. Bestway used several numbering sequences, sometimes with letter prefixes, and its sewing-pattern and knitting-pattern systems should not be treated as one uninterrupted chronology.

Affordable fashion during the 1930s

Bestway’s growth occurred during a period when home dressmaking and hand knitting had real economic importance.

The Depression placed household budgets under severe pressure, and making clothes at home could be cheaper than purchasing completed garments. At the same time, fashion remained culturally important. Pattern publishers responded by offering styles that promised both economy and modernity.

Academic research into British women’s magazines shows that 1930s knitting patterns followed contemporary fashion closely. Fitted waists, decorative necklines, puffed sleeves, lace panels and textured stitches allowed home knitters to reproduce fashionable silhouettes at relatively modest cost.

Bestway’s commercial strength lay in delivering this mixture of aspiration and practicality. Its publications did not present knitting merely as thrift. They showed readers how to create garments that looked smart, current and carefully styled.

The Second World War

The war transformed British knitting, and Bestway adapted quickly.

Wool became scarce, clothing was rationed and households were encouraged to conserve, repair and reuse materials. At the same time, civilian knitters were asked to make garments and accessories for members of the armed forces.

Surviving Bestway publications include patterns for balaclavas, mittens, scarves, socks, pullovers and other service garments. One digitised leaflet, Bestway Knitting Leaflet No. 109, was described as having been designed in consultation with the Admiralty and contains a pattern for naval use. It was published in London by Amalgamated Press.

Another wartime publication, Bestway 106: Knitted Comforts for Men in the Forces, included a helmet, mittens, scarf and socks.

These were not simply fashion products. They formed part of the broader wartime culture in which knitting became a practical contribution to national service.

Bestway continued to produce civilian patterns as well. Wartime and immediately post-war leaflets include economical jumpers, cardigans, gloves, hats, children’s garments and Fair Isle designs. Their yarn quantities were often stated prominently, which mattered greatly when wool was restricted or difficult to obtain.

Bestway and Fair Isle fashion

Fair Isle and stranded-colour knitting feature prominently among surviving Bestway patterns reflecting a much broader British fashion for patterned knitwear. Fair Isle designs had gained widespread visibility during the interwar period and remained popular through the 1940s. Colourwork allowed small quantities of contrasting yarn to create a strong decorative effect, an attractive feature during years of material scarcity.

Surviving examples include cardigans, jumpers, gloves, hats and accessories.

Bestway also published colourwork designs for men and children, showing that the

technique was not confined to women’s fashion. Museum and archive records preserve examples such as children’s cardigans with Fair Isle borders and patterned pullovers intended for men.

Commercial partnerships with yarn manufacturers

Although Bestway belonged to a publishing company, its patterns regularly specified commercially available yarns. Surviving leaflets mention brands including Patons, Lister, Bairns-Wear, Greenock and Emu. In some cases, the yarn manufacturer’s name or trademark was displayed prominently on the cover.

This arrangement benefited both parties. Bestway gained technical and commercial associations with established yarn companies, while the yarn manufacturer received direct promotion to knitters purchasing a particular design.

It also explains why two Bestway leaflets can look quite different. The Bestway name remained constant, but cover typography, photography, pricing and yarn advertising varied according to date and commercial partner.

The specified yarn should not automatically be assumed to have been manufactured by Bestway. Bestway usually supplied the instructions; the named yarn came from a separate spinning or retail company.

The Bestway look

Early knitting leaflets could be modest black-and-white publications, but many later Bestway covers used colour photography or colourised portrait images. The garment was usually shown on a carefully posed model, accompanied by a concise title such as “Simple Cardigan”, “Twin Set” or “Fair Isle Jumper”. Yarn requirements, size and price were frequently visible on the front.

The covers provide a compact record of changing beauty ideals and fashion presentation. Wartime designs often feature structured shoulders, neat waists and elaborate hairstyles. Post-war examples gradually adopt softer silhouettes and the increasingly polished photographic style of the 1950s.

The models were generally not identified. Two exceptions uncovered through Woman’s Weekly archive material was Patricia Squires, who appeared repeatedly in the magazine and also modelled for Bestway and Weldon’s leaflets, and Joan Felce (pictured left), idendified via Woman and Home archive material, who modelled for various leaflets in the 1940s and

The post-war period

Bestway remained active after 1945 and appears to have enjoyed a strong position during the post-war knitting boom.

Britain continued to experience shortages and austerity into the early 1950s, making home production economically useful. At the same time, knitwear became central to post-war fashion. Twinsets, fitted cardigans, short-sleeved jumpers, baby clothes and children’s garments were all well suited to the leaflet format.

Surviving Bestway patterns from the late 1940s and 1950s include an extensive mixture of women’s, men’s, children’s and baby designs.

Bestway leaflets continued to be published by Amalgamated Press, as were related craft brands such as Weldon’s. The two names sometimes appeared in the same magazine environment, though they retained separate identities.

Bestway’s wider craft publishing

Knitting was only one branch of the Bestway catalogue. The brand also appeared on:

• paper dressmaking patterns;

• crochet leaflets and books;

• embroidery and household-needlework publications;

• soft-toy patterns;

• accessory and practical household designs;

• specialist knitting books containing several projects.

  
  

This breadth reflected the structure of women’s publishing at the time. A reader of an Amalgamated Press magazine might be interested in sewing a dress, knitting a child’s cardigan, crocheting a bag or making toys for the home. Bestway could serve all of those interests under one recognisable name.

The brand even extended to knitting aids. A 1930s card row counter is known under the Bestway name, and a wartime version was later adapted for practical use by knitters.

Amalgamated Press becomes Fleetway

In 1959, the Mirror Group acquired Amalgamated Press. The publishing business was subsequently renamed Fleetway Publications, after its Fleetway House headquarters in Farringdon Street. Fleetway became part of the International Publishing Corporation, or IPC, in 1963. The wider publishing operation was reorganised as IPC Magazines in 1968. It is tempting to assume that Bestway followed each of these corporate changes in a simple, clearly documented sequence. The available evidence does not justify that certainty.

Evidence from surviving Bestway leaflets suggests the imprint continued into the decimalisation period of the early 1970s. One example (as pictured) is priced “9d / 4p” and published by Bestway Publications, 18 Sloane Street, London. The dual pricing reflects the transition from pre-decimal to decimal currency introduced on 15 February 1971, indicating that at least some Bestway knitting patterns were still being issued or reprinted around 1970–71. The Sloane Street address also differs from the earlier Fleetway House and Amalgamated Press addresses found on many mid-century leaflets, suggesting that the publishing operation or its administrative offices had changed by this stage. At present, however, no published corporate history has been identified that fully explains this transition, so the surviving patterns themselves remain an important source for reconstructing Bestway’s later years.

Bestway knitting patterns survive from around the late 1950s and into the 1970s, and some later examples carry higher numbering sequences or altered visual branding. However, a dependable public record identifying the exact year in which the Bestway knitting-pattern line was discontinued has not been located.

The safest conclusion is that Bestway continued into the period of corporate transition surrounding Fleetway and IPC, but gradually disappeared as an active mass-market knitting-pattern imprint.

Why Bestway declined

No single surviving source appears to document a formal decision to close the Bestway pattern business.

Its decline was probably connected to broader changes in publishing, clothing manufacture and domestic craft, although that remains an interpretation rather than a documented company statement.

By the 1960s and 1970s, inexpensive ready-made clothing was becoming more widely available. Yarn manufacturers increasingly promoted their own branded pattern ranges, while magazine publishers reorganised or consolidated older titles and departments.

Home knitting remained popular, but the commercial landscape was changing. A publisher-owned, multi-craft pattern brand tied closely to the magazine economy of the early twentieth century no longer occupied quite the same position.

The absence of a clear final issue or closure notice is not unusual. Commercial leaflets were disposable publications, and corporate archives tend to preserve major magazines more consistently than the internal history of pattern departments.

Bestway today

Bestway no longer operates as a prominent contemporary knitting-pattern publisher, but the brand has acquired a substantial second life among collectors and vintage knitters.

Original leaflets are held in private collections and in institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the University of Southampton’s Knitting Reference Library, the Knitting & Crochet Guild and The Women’s Library at the London School of Economics.

They are valued for several reasons:

• they preserve garments that may not survive in physical form;

• they document everyday British fashion rather than couture alone;

• they show historical yarns, sizing and knitting terminology;

• their cover designs record changing styles of commercial illustration and photography;

• they allow present-day knitters to recreate clothing from earlier periods.

  
  

For social historians, they also provide evidence of how women encountered fashion, domestic economy and commercial advertising.

Knitting from an original Bestway pattern

A modern knitter should expect some differences between a vintage Bestway leaflet and a contemporary pattern.

Vintage yarn descriptions do not always correspond neatly to current yarn weights; Needle sizes may use the old British system, in which larger numbers indicate thinner needles; and Patterns may also provide fewer diagrams, less finishing guidance and a narrower size range than knitters now expect.

Most importantly, the original tension should be treated as the controlling measurement. A modern substitute yarn should be chosen by knitting a tension square rather than by relying solely on terms such as “3-ply” or “fingering”.

Garment proportions may also differ from modern expectations. Many Bestway designs were intended to be worn relatively close to the body, with short waists, shaped shoulders or limited ease.

These differences are part of their historical character, but they mean that successful reconstruction requires care.

The legacy of Bestway

Bestway’s importance lies not in one famous designer or one revolutionary garment. Its achievement was industrial and cultural. It connected the fashion pages of popular magazines with the practical work of sewing and knitting at home. It offered millions of readers affordable access to current styles. During wartime, it supplied patterns for useful service garments; during peacetime, it translated changing fashions into projects that ordinary knitters could make for themselves and their families.

The surviving leaflets may appear ephemeral, but together they document several decades of British domestic life.

Bestway was more than a pattern name. It was part of a publishing system that helped shape how twentieth-century Britain dressed itself.