With a clickety-click and fingers flying, the very crafty women from the Isle of Sanday got to work.  

From needles and knitting machines emerged chunky sweaters with vibrant patterns that would travel around the world.

For around 30 years knitwear designed and made on the small Orkney island was craved by the chic and stylish, from Japan to New York, London to Paris.

While for the women of Sanday, the knitwear they made on an incredible scale brought never before enjoyed luxuries: brown envelopes stuffed with wages were religiously saved to pay for new bathrooms, holidays in the sun and goodies for the kids.

Elspeth Sinclair, and Sandra Towrie (right) at Aviemore Trade Fair in the mid-1980s Elspeth Sinclair, and Sandra Towrie (right) at Aviemore Trade Fair in the mid-1980s (Image: Horne Archive)

The remarkable story of how a group of home crafters built a knitting empire from their small island at the edge of Orkney is now being told in full for the first time by one of the knitters whose own life was transformed by needles, yarn and endless rows of stocking stitch.

Using detail gleaned from long forgotten handwritten ledgers and conversations with the women and families touched by the Isle of Sanday Knitters boom, it tells how what began with a simple crochet square led to home improvements and holidays, injected pride into the small community and helped stemmed the flow of people away from the rural outpost.

From their corner of Orkney, the Sanday knitters supplied Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdales, Abercrombie and Fitch and, in the UK, the House of Fraser, Aquascutum, Hackett and even Harrods.

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At the centre of it during its peak years, Sandra Towrie was swept from her job as a teacher and busy mum to become Sanday's knitwear designer, and thrust into a jet-setting fashion world of London, Paris and Berlin.

Her book, How to Knit a Bathroom, tells in carefully researched detail how a simple idea rooted in the late 1960s age of miniskirts, knee high boots and crochet waistcoats inspired a knitwear business that thrived the next three decades.

It was an incredible success for a small island business - one which Sandra admits is hard to believe.

“I was just in my twenties when I came to Sanday and by my early 30s I was travelling all over the place.

Isle of Sanday knitters created sweaters for customers around the worldIsle of Sanday knitters created sweaters for customers around the world (Image: Roderick Thorne)

“I felt very grown up doing it, but really, I was still young. I’d only ever been to London once before with some friends, and then suddenly I was flying off to London, travelling around by Tube and going to yarn fairs and trade fairs in Paris.

“It’s hard to believe it ever happened.”

It started when Mary Baker, the wife of a local schoolteacher, spotted an advert in a craft magazine for people who could help meet the enormous demand for crochet waistcoats, tops, handbags and even bikinis.

With no fast fashion in those days crochet items had to be handmade. Mary, who arrived in Sanday in the late 1960s and been immediately struck by the knitting, crochet, spinning, sewing and tapestry that flowed effortlessly from the hands of local women, spotted an opportunity.

Many island women had learned how to work with fabric and yarn as children: most could rustle up a few crochet squares of an evening with their eyes shut.

Mary carefully listed the names and addresses of the first crochet cohort in a school exercise book: their first consignment of 1400 squares earned the women a princely 6d, or 2.5pence, per square.

The most prolific delivered 107 squares, earning herself £2/13/6d.

But, Sandra points out, they were days when women worked hard on farms and in field for nothing. For most, those wages were the first they had ever earned.

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“The Sanday of 50 years ago was, in some respects, a very different place from today, but in other ways, things are still the same,” she writes in the book.

“The importance of community spirit, the willingness to volunteer in community groups and activities, quietly ‘lending a hand’ without expecting any recognition – these still live on.”

The island’s more academic young lads of the time would head to school in Kirkwall and usually a future away from the islands.

Knitters' families were often called on to model knitwear Knitters' families were often called on to model knitwear (Image: Roderick Thorne)

For the young women on Sanday, life tended to revolve around marriage and children.

With few opportunities for paid-for employment many would be expected to contribute to family farming life, cleaning out byers with a wheelbarrow and shovel, tending to calves, hens, and do housework which was all the more challenging because Sanday did not have mains electricity until the summer of 1973.

The chance to earn a little extra doing something that came almost naturally, would be lifechanging for some.

The old exercise book would reveal by its end the crochet work had made its top earner £7 for their efforts: the equivalent of £75 today.

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“The idea was born that maybe the handiwork that was generally taken for granted could become a source of income,” says Sandra, originally from Shetland whose expert knitting skills and eye for design was seized upon in Sanday.

Under Mrs Baker’s guidance, an Alpine-inspired knitwear collection was devised and samples delivered to House of Fraser in Glasgow.

When Sir Hugh Fraser gave his approval, Isle of Sanday Knitting Association took off.

Before long, orders flooded in. The brightly coloured knitwear with its Icelandic, Nordic and Fair Isle patterns attracted attention from buyers around the country.

Knitters at the island's Drill Hall, which became known as the Wool HallKnitters at the island's Drill Hall, which became known as the Wool Hall (Image: Horne Photographic Archive)

An army of knitters was recruited. Those with knitting machines made the basic sweaters, others carried out the more intense handknit tasks of making Fair Isle yokes and hand finishing each item.

Some were employed to look after quality control, to pack up orders and arrange postage, handle accounts and deal with letters.

With orders eventually arriving from around the world, keeping track of who wanted what long before digital spreadsheets and emails meant hours of cross checking and note taking.

A former church hall became ‘knitwear HQ’ despite workers having to rely on portable gas heaters to warm it and hissing Tilly lights to work under.

The 'Valhalla' sweater was among the Isle of Sanday Knitters' collection of knitsThe 'Valhalla' sweater was among the Isle of Sanday Knitters' collection of knits (Image: Sandra Towrie)

But from there, hundreds of sweaters were sent around the world to some of the biggest names in retail.

The 1980s demand for distinctive geometric patterns and picture style knits saw Sanday’s knitters create anything from a lighthouse to a horse’s head, mountains and farm scenes on the front of a sweater.

In the 1990s, fashion designer Alexander McQueen sought out Sanday’s knitters to bring to life a vision for a knitted denim creation.

And in the autumn of 1997, the BBC came calling for two chunky handknitted sweaters to be worn by Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey for their Men Behaving Badly Christmas special, helping to kickstart a Christmas jumper trend.

“When the company was started, there were few opportunities for women to secure paid employment,” recalls Sandra, now 72.

“It’s not that women weren’t busy doing many important things; they just weren’t paid for it.

“Many households with young families struggled to make ends meet. Terms such as ‘child poverty’ and ‘fuel poverty’ had not yet been coined but doubtless existed, and it was usually the woman of the house who had to find a means of clothing the children and putting food on the table.

“For some, the struggle was too hard and families moved from the North Isles to Kirkwall, where paid employment was more readily found.”

When money was left over, it usually would be ploughed back into essentials.

“Any modernisation of the farmhouse came at the end of a long list of essentials, and usually, all that could be afforded was a few rolls of wallpaper or a new hearthrug.”

Isle of Sanday Knitters 1986-87 price list and styles Isle of Sanday Knitters 1986-87 price list and styles (Image: Sandra Towrie)

The chance to boost their income from knitting, a skill acquired in childhood, was eagerly grasped.

“For many of the women, this was the first time they had had money that they could regard as ‘their own’,  and they treasured their earnings, putting the envelope aside in a drawer to save up for something that would not otherwise be afforded – some new furniture, a holiday, a better TV set and, in one case, a proper bathroom,” says Sandra.

One decided to ‘knit her family a holiday’, saving up her earning to take her family away for a break.

Others used their envelope to buy a sweet treat or cake for the family.

For some, just being part of it opened their eyes to a new way of life and opportunities.

Eventually, however, demand fell for the Sanday knits. Cheaper – although less good quality - alternatives could be mass produced elsewhere, and it became harder to find the expert knitters to devote hours to completing a single garment.

The Isle of Sandy Knitters Association was wound up in 1999.

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Although some have pointed to surging interest in traditional skills and handcrafted items from Orkney and Shetland in particular,  Sandra can’t see the days of the Sanday Knitters returning.

“The economic situation has changed, as have women’s expectations,” she says.

“Most households now need two incomes, and women, quite rightly, expect to pursue careers outside the home which leaves less time and opportunity for picking up a piece of knitting than was the case for their mothers and grandmothers.”

Sandra Towrie became the Isle of Sanday Knitters' designer Sandra Towrie became the Isle of Sanday Knitters' designer (Image: Sandra Towrie)

Occasionally, however, an Isle of Sanday Knitters’ original will pop up for sale on Ebay or Vinted, usually at a fraction of the price that a modern handknitted woollen sweater would cost.

Indeed, Sandra recently snapped up one of the first, a Norwegian style tunic, good as new complete with its Sanday Knitters label, bought on Vinted for just £25.

Once one of many, it is a precious reminder of a golden age of knitting on the island.

She plans to add it to the ledgers, photographs and memories held at Sanday Heritage Centre – a reminder of when the island’s knitters ruled the fashion world.

How to Knit a Bathroom, The Story of the Isle of Sanday Knitters, by Sandra Towrie was funded by North Isles Landscape Partnership Scheme, will be available to buy from Amazon