Draw draw draw

If anyone else studied their art foundation at Chelsea, (like myself) you will be aware that they are big on drawing. If I recall correctly my first few weeks there were spent continuously exploring ways of mark making and drawing different qualities of line. Whilst packing this weekend to travel back to London for the start of the new term (and desperately procrastinating the task in hand...), I had a flick through some of my old sketchbooks.

 This is a selection of pages from one of my early foundation projects. I had to make a 'miniature world' which was a collection of small electrical components stuck into a tiny chest of drawers. Yes those pesky components crop up a fair few times in my design work! Anyway from this still life I did lots of delicate little drawings on a variety of constructed and collaged papers which finally informed a number of print ideas. I was exploring mono-printing different textures, layered with cut out papers relating to my initial drawings. 

  I felt it to be an appropriate post as the concept I am currently working on is entitled 'the travelling line', and much of this imagery fits the idea nicely!

Umbro 2011

Around March 2011, I attended a design briefing by Umbro, which was about taking inspiration from, and re-inventing 4 of their iconic menswear pieces. The idea of designing menswear initially sent me running for the hills (not a field I'd even contemplated exploring before), however after a shaky start working with the most boring colour palette I'd ever come up with, (I'm not featuring that bit), I decided to break all the rules by thinking football loving men would wear purple and got completely sucked into the project, resulting in my designs being chosen for the winning collection.

  I took my inspiration from the Umbro flicker archive of football shirts, mainly the huge variety of colours and directions of stripes found on the shirts. Following this, I worked on a concept of designing scarves which could sit on top of a football strip for fans to wear when attending a match. I ended up making a final piece which was an interpretation of a jacket lapel, enabling a simple t-shirt to be worn underneath which would then look far smarter and more exciting with the addition of the scarf.

  The final collection was a collaboration between Footwear, Menswear, Textile and Vehicle design students from the RCA. As a team we exhibited our pieces in an exhibition alongside the RCA Fashion Shows 2011 in our own Umbro locker room - see below!

A Post Apocalyptic World

Imagine a world, many years from now, where birds have lost the ability to fly and rely on Victorian flying contraptions in order to navigate the skies as they once did... 

then give a knitter some wool, metal springs, electrical wire and tell her to translate this concept into fabric...

and finally, turn the fabrics into a collection of knitted accessories. The results of which are a capelet / shoulder / neck piece, a decorative cuff and an arm-warmer.

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.

How my love affair with knitting began

As it is the beginning of a New Year and the one in which my studies will finally come to an end, I thought it fitting to revisit the first samples I ever did on a standard gauge domestic knit machine. This was of course alongside learning how to use the machine, sadly even I am not genius enough to have just magically worked out how to do these techniques! I remember when I showed the work at a critique, my peers and tutors thought it was quite Missoni-esque, obviously a comment which made me enormously happy as I do aspire to be equally as successful as them in a few years time....

  I should probably apologise for the messy edges going on here, this was before I learnt how to darn them in. It's also worth noting I dyed a large proportion of the yarns I used in these swatches, enhanced with a few thicker shop bought hand knit wools.