Machine knitting class

Today I went to a machine knitting class. For those of you who do not know what a knitting machine looks like, I have included a few photos from today to give you a feel for them. Household knitting machines became really popular in the 1960’s, as an ‘easy’ way to knit jumpers etc. Unfortunately for the people who bought them, knitting machines proved much more difficult to master than regular hand knitting and they were soon abandoned in storerooms and cupboards by the dozen. But someone’s trash is another treasure, and now you can buy 2^nd hand, (as new) ones relatively cheaply on ebay and the like. Learning how to use them is another challenge altogether, which brings me to this class in the hope of gaining knowledge from those more experienced in the field.

Toileing: Developing a new design from a basic pattern

I use a t-shirt that I like to create a basic t-shirt pattern by tracing around the garment onto pattern paper. Then I cut out a new t-shirt using this pattern and sew it up to create a mock-up of the original garment. Once that is completed I put the t-shirt on a mannequin and draw on new design lines using my dds sketch as a reference. For this particular design, I also drape a cowl collar over the t-shirt to get the look I am after. When I am happy with the design, I mark centre back, centre front and the side seams on all the pieces, and cut along the design lines to create new pattern pieces. I then need to trace these out onto pattern paper and add seam allowance along the design lines. The final step is to create a toile of this pattern and check the fit and design on a person to see if any further changes need to be made (and further changes always need to be made!)

Dying

A common way to add a unique element to bought fabric is through dying, either commercially or by hand. At the moment I am trying different techniques to produce a stripe on wool jersey. I don’t want a graphic, clear-cut look so I am not using screen printing, but instead am trying to apply the dye directly using different brushes and a wet or dry base cloth. The use of bleach to pull out the colour is also adding interesting effects to my experiments.

Portfolio

These pages are from my digital portfolio and are a taste of the range of projects that I have completed and also give a sense of my design style. Enjoy!

Collection Update

Wow, June already- its amazing how quickly this year has gone. I am beginning to illustrate my collection at the moment- in preparation for the crits in two weeks. Its great to see how the colours work together across the collection and how the garments have developed over the course of this first semester.