New Designers 12: Textile Knit

ARTS THREAD seeks out highlights from knit at last week’s New Designers show.

Connie Lou, graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone Dundee, has creates a beautiful elegant collection that turns influences from decorative architecture into sustainable luxurious fabrics. Connie uses cashmere and silks and has come up with her own knitting techniques as she wanted to show that the knit itself can be a form of embellishment and can be artfully decorated.

Cheryl Robinson, a knitwear graduate from London Metropolitan University, impressed us with her beetles-inspired fashion collection. Her thorough research into the specimen collection at the Natural History Museum gave her an interesting insight into shapes, metallic structures and influenced the yarn and colour choices for her knits. The fabulous drape formed by the techniques of machine manipulation of lifting stitches, plating, pleating, foiling and false ribs reflects her research. The metallic yarn used creates a beetle-like shimmer and rubber ring details recreate the structures of beetles.

Emma Jayne Croucher is a graduate from Northbrook College and her unique felted knits of lambs wool portrays her research and inspiration of looking at different underwater habitats, creatures and plant life. Rather than using traditional colours Emma took her influences from a book called Oceanic Wilderness – hence the fabulous colours. She hopes to use this wonderfully quirky collection for interior and fashion accessories.

Heidi Upton, a graduate from Grays School of Art, Aberdeen, studied knitted textiles and is inspired by sound and sound waves. She created a knitwear collection based on the idea of what sound waves look like if you could see them. Heidi did lots of research before creating this unique and eye-catching collection. Her colour palette comes from her own love for natural and earthy tones, with a bright tone of yarn to indicate the sound waves. She used both industrial and domestic machines to create intricate and transparent knits using mercerised cotton.

Nicola Brand, also from Grays School of Art Aberdeen, has turned her fantastic illustrations of quirky stories into a knitwear collection. She is inspired by Steam Punk and technology versus nature and man versus machine and her collection ranges from laser-cut leathers to embellished knits – a new take on the original steam punk Victorian science fiction. Yarns used are wools and cottons which Nicola dip-dyes to produce different effects; the colours are influenced by her research into nature.