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!

A little bit of Print

Something a little bit different - a collection of screen prints and knitted pieces I did for an exhibition in the second year of my BA degree. This was before I had fully committed to specialise in knit. The imagery was inspired by a number of my collages, which incorporated beautifully ornate wrought ironwork found in some of my favourite English gardens, and electrical components courtesy of my Dad's garage (a treasure trove of similar objects).
  My screen printing explored layering up discharge printing and flocking, whilst the knitwear was about building up fabrics from individual pieces, much in the same way I constructed the collages.

Tea Dress Part 2

Having posted the photos of the tea dress, I decided to go in search of my sketchbook and the design work behind the garment. What I uncovered were many collages featuring fairy cake bun cases and paper doilies....

Fabric Sandwiches

Sketchbook

Sketchbook Collage