King Charles' Nightshirt Charts by Elizabeth Thomas

King Charles' Nightshirt Charts

Knitting
March 2008
This pattern is available as a free Ravelry download

First of all, I didn’t come up with this pattern so much as I attempted to chart the stitches based on what I could see from a picture.

The first diamonds pattern is directly from www.drakt.org (clicking this link will take you directly to the page, scroll down for the files - thank you for creating and maintaining such a great website, Mijauw!). This website also includes a link to a picture of the King Charles nightshirt. This is Mijauw’s website and I am not affiliated with it, but I have been given permission to document it here. (Some of the links have changed, this link from the Museum Of London has pictures of the shirt - thank you KnittingDigits!).

I added the Diamond & X pattern based on my assumptions of the relative size of the diamonds in this nightshirt and the Norwegian nightshirts described on the website mentioned above. Occasionally this band is used as a horizontal divider, and sometimes as a vertical accent (as in the button placket) on the King Charles nightshirt.

The main body pattern was charted starting at the top (right where the diamonds end) and going down. I have attempted to chart it for the entire seven repeats.

Although I am very close to the original in relative spacing, I did not get it perfect. The gauge used was very tiny, and the pictures I had available to me were somewhat limited. If you’ve had a better go at it please let me know so I can either update here or link to yours! Thanks. :’)