Shima Seiki visit

While i was at Derby University John was kind enough to ring Shima Seiki in Donington for me to go and visit them.



When I arrived there i was shown around the show room of fabrics and then shown into a room with their knitting machines

There were loads of different fabrics and garments in the showroom and i loved the structure of some of the pieces

 The things that were made on a whole garment knitting machine were amazing as the machine is able to knit the garments as one whole piece without any seams at all

 I was lucky enough to be able to have a look on my own through all the garments and fabrics which was great to be able to see all the yarns that had been used within them

Derby University

Recently I contacted Derby University to ask if I was able to go and use their shima seiki knitting machines as at Norwich we have very limited knitting facilities, so to my happiness they said I could. 

I visited them on Friday and met Kay the course leader and also John who was the man who does everything with the Shima machines.  

Firstly i got shown around all the bits in the Britannia Mill, where they have screen printing, Ceramics, Weave, and Knit. It was amazing to see just how much they had there and the range of equipment that was available, they must of had around 30 little table top weaving looms and two digital ones and one big digital one. 

Below is the big digital weaving loom

 Above is one of the special knitting machines that knits in a circle ( can't remember what it was called)

 

Below is the Shima knitting machines, the closest one is a chunky more hand knit feel machine and the far one is a very very fine gauge which you could knit things like monofilament on

 It threads up much like a dubied knitting machine but its very fiddly to do 

 Here you can see some of my work coming off it, this is a pattern i had already made myself and John loaded in into the special shima computers first to tell the machine what i wanted i.e stitches, double bed, single bed etc.

 

What i loved most about the knitting that comes off was the fact it was double sided some you couldn't see any floats and it had my pattern on both sides which made it a great fabric and something you basically wouldn't have to do anything to.

 

There were loads of different amazing yarns that the University had as well and I loved the one above, it was very much like a towel type yarn. 

Above is my samples that i got off the machines and i love the towel yarn one, it was just such a different yarn to what I'm used to using and it turned out great. 

I'm defiantly going to go back and keep in contact with Derby as they were such a great help to me and really opened my eyes to shima and also different types of knitting machines and all the possibilities that there are out there for me.

Waterproof Knits

Though our recent Team project I wanted to make some different fabric and use different yarns to what i would normally. 

I also wanted to try some print with my knitting but I know I don't like screen printing as its to messy and takes to long. So I thought I would give sublimation printing, for this I had to knit with polyester yarn so that the inks with go onto my knitting.  

With this I rang Fairfield yarns and asked him what yarns he had and he sent me out a polyester yarn. I wanted to do more photography work within this project as its something i haven't really used before but i know i love to do. 

This was the image i started with from flowers i got from the garden

I then went onto photoshop and played around with different effects and skills i had been taught

I really like how these came out and think that they went with our theme which was British Bohemian really well

I then sublimated these onto my knitting 

I then had to think how can i make knitting work for an outdoor tent context so i thought about making it waterproof, so i got some clear pvc and heat pressed it onto my knitting, i didn't know if this would work or not, but it did. 

Just us two

Starting to feel a little frustrated, me and Meg Barnes have been doing lots of samples and trying to take the project somewhere but without a lot of input from the fashion students we have been struggling. It feels like they don't have time or interest in getting involved with what we are doing. 

But me and Meg have been going on regardless and today we made some samples which we both are happy with. 

Thoughts?

Though doing our recent collaboration project i feel that i have become a lot more confident in talking to others and showing my work 

I feel that these projects have helped me a lot in talking in front of people but also contacting people and putting myself out there. 

Fashion Collaboration

Our current project is a collaboration with some Fashion students 

We have been given a Box and asked to put things in it that we think is going to be fashion in 2036

Our group decided with the idea of smart fabric and technology and fashion becoming one

We then thought how can we produce our ideas in such a short amount of time, so we booked the photography room and used a mannequin and some fabric we brought and projected light and images onto this in the dark

I really like how some of our photos have come out and we now have some staff to move forward with 

Van Dal Shoes

From my last project i was left thinking what can i do with this fabric I've made 

So I got into contact with Carol Lake who's shop i got past everyday and i had seen her shoes in her shop window, so i emailed her to ask where she got them made, as i really wanted to see my fabric made into something 

She told me that Van Dal shoe factory in Norwich do them. I didn't know that there was a shoe factory in Norwich so i was really excited when i found this out. 

I emailed them to ask if they would be interested in seeing my fabrics and also if i could see the factory, and to my surprise they said yes. 

I went to Van Dal and met a man called Peter who sat with me and looked at my fabrics and said he would make me a pair of shoes with my fabric which i am so excited about. 

 I got to see around the factory which was amazing to see all the different machines for each bit of making a shoe.

 There was a different station for each job and everyone there had a certain job

Now i have to wait a few weeks for my shoes!!

Textiles collaboration project

For our last project we were put into groups within our Textiles year, each group was then given a company to create something for. 

Our group was given Desingual which is a Spanish based company that have a bohemian free vibe about them.     

  

We were asked to come up with 10 designs for a living / bedroom space, so from this we all got together and came up with the idea of a yurt for festivals going with the free bohemian vibe. 

I personally feel like this project was a struggle for me as i felt i could do as much knitting as i would of liked as it didn't fit with the brand but i also got to try lots of new techniques that i hadn't tried before and which i am glad i did do now as i loved doing different things. 

For this project i worked a lot with photography and photoshop i loved doing more photography as its something i have always loved but never really brought into my work. 

 

We each had a word which came to mind when we thought of British so i went with wild flowers, so i picked and photographed wild flowers in my garden and also did a few drawings from them.

We collaged all our work together and all came out with different designs which really helped us getting going with the samples and ideas.

I decided i wanted to do some knit and challenge myself in what i could create that would work for the yurt theme so i got some polyester yarn and knitted a few bits of fabric up with that.

This was my first sublimation print i came out with and i love it and I'm really glad i tried something different like print with my knitting

Above is one of all of our work collaged together and then put into circles and then i edited it into a pattern on photo shop and printed it onto some of my knitting.

With the first print i did i then thought to myself what can i do to make this work for a yurt/ outdoors environment? 

So i got some clear PVC and heat pressed it over the top and that made the knitting water proof for outdoor whether. 

I really enjoyed doing this project as i got to work with people i wouldn't normally get to work with. I also feel i learnt a lot from working with different people and it was good to see the different ways we all work.