From the 19th Floor

Up until now I have blogged purely about my own work. However it's now time to mix things up and add in things that inspire me / are of interest within the general world of knit/fashion/london/me.

Being a very lucky little so and so today, I got to go and sit front row at the Jonathan Saunders AW12/13 show on the 19th floor of The Broadgate Tower. It was FANTASTIC. I really can't say much more (other than Anna Wintour was also there, so obviously it was the place to be on a chilly sunday evening), so I shall let a number of photos I took do the talking. I don't have a fancy camera so some might be a bit fuzzy but it's all about the general vibe rather than the finer details. Enjoy!

woven leather, very clever.

nice bit of knit!

powder blue = my new obsession

graphic patterned textures

divine sheer back to the emerald dress

intarsia check patterned knit 

clever combinations of ladders and stripes 

the clever man himself 

incredible backdrop

the breathtaking view from the venue

Better than your average Sunday.

New Era XC Cap Design Competition 2010

After finishing my BA degree and with the luxury of an entire summer of free time before diving into my next course the RCA, I decided to enter a competition to re-design New Era's iconic baseball cap. Probably not the most obvious thing for a knit designer to do, but it was a new challenge with a £10k prize up for grabs, so I said why not and gave it a go. Before embarking on building a sculptural piece of 'head art', I had been building a sketchbook of art deco inspired imagery that I thought could look quite cool if it was blown up onto jumpers, so it came in handy when I wanted so funky graphics for my hat.

For the cap, I had a concept of taking the shape of the peak and multiplying it around the hat in loads of different crazy prints. Hopefully so you would see little bits of everyone from different angles. I mocked this up in paper as so ---->

So, armed with a blank canvas cap, some super cool paint pens and markers courtesy of New Era, and electrical tape and a bit of knit, I created this work of art. A bit random and slightly unwearable, but it went into an exhibition which travelled around the globe and I now have a very posh coffee table book with all the entries (including mine) in. Oh and the nice people at creative review also featured it on their blog here.

NEON

Many of you will know, I LOVE neon and I had slightly forgotten this until I started adding it into colour palettes I was making today. In celebration of my renewed relationship with fluorescence, I have decided to show you a sketchbook I did whilst on my foundation course. There was a lot of neon, more electrical components and some slightly questionable sportswear design ideas, but it's a fun and very playful, so put on your sunglasses, you're going to need them!

Rubber

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks for this little knitter, hence my lack of blog posts for which I apologise and will now hopefully make up for! After a most inspirational trip to Florence, I've been finalising colours and ideas for my final collection (sneak peek coming soon..).

I posted a little while ago about the first of 2 projects I did for Pitti Filati (the yarn event I have just visited) so now I think it's time for the second instalment. The title I was given this time was 'Rubber' and my inspiration consisted of imagery of bubble gum and rubber bands.

The Rubber band-esque piece...

In progress (strips of anti slip under-rug silicone matt being knitted into a lace pattern on my domestic machine)

And then Bubble Gum!

More shreaded anti slip matting (yes pound shops really do sell it in pink!)

There was also another title of 'Rags' and this was a piece all about denim.

And just to finish here's a couple of pics I took from the Ponte Vecchio at night.

 And the smallest tomato in the world which we found in a pack of slightly more normal size ones...