Laura McPherson

Laura McPherson - Knit Designer & Consultant 

Laura went to Winchester School of Art doing a BA in Textiles after she finished she had a year break and moved to London. In October 2007 she went on to do an MA at The Royal Collage of Art in Constructed Textile until 2009. 

 

Her final collection doing her MA was called- Ephemeral Stillness (Pictures below)

 

Laura's work is very much about structure and materials and finding out what different yarns will do when put together.

When she finished doing her MA she was selected by TEXPRINT where she got to show her work in London and Paris for Indigo as part of Premiere vision and where she sold 6 pieces which where brought as more inspirational fabrics. 

She then went onto work for Missioni (knitwear brand) which was based in Italy, she was mainly knitting on the Stoll knitting machines. 

She did Pre-fall 2010

and 

Autumn/Winter 2011-2012

(Pictured below) 

She then came back to London and brought a studio of her own as sole trend fabric forecasting. She then went into teaching full time in Leeds, but then decided to just do part time at lots of different universities. 

She has also done a lot of work for view magazine putting knits with pictures: 

  

Laura has also done work for SpinExpo which is a yarn and trend fair, where she would be sent new exciting yarns and asked to knit the most exciting piece with these yarns which people would be able to look at and see what they could do if they brought these yarns. 

In 2013 she started to work with Mark Beecroft experimenting with 3D printing and knit together 

 

They have looked at many different printed which print in different ways to get the best one which will print the knitting so it is flexible and not brittle.

https://youtu.be/Cu8PymKiC40

From this lecture and being able to have a chat with Laura I'm going to look into using lycra yarn within my work as i want my pieces to become more 3D rather than just flat knitting.

Print Room

With our current project for fashion I've been looking into urban structure so I've been looking at buildings but not just the building but the lines that are used to create those buildings my first point of inspiration was one of our university buildings.

I then decided to go to the print room at university and try doing something different with my plain knitted fabric. I had made some screens up with my drawings of just grids and lines. 

I wanted to use the method of layering up different screen that we had be shown in a workshop, image below is what i made in the workshop.

I really enjoyed this workshop and i feel like it really helped me look into different ways to work onto my knits.

 

I had three pieces of fabric and they were all made of lambswool two were more felted and one was just lightly felted in the wash. 

Below are the three pieces i made in the print room: 

As you can see in some of the images the prints didn't go completely clear on the knit as the more felted pieces had a lot of fibres on the surface so it wasn't a completely clean print

 I am really happy with the print below which is on the knitted piece which was only felted a tiny bit, the colours came out a lot cleaner and fresh, I was really glad i went into the print room to try a different ways of adding more to my knits. 

Below are the final pieces with i have printed and then added some foiling which i feel has really finished them off, and i am happy with how these have turned out

Mark Fast - Knitwear

Mark Fast is a knitwear designer, he moved to London from Canada in 2002 to study at Central Saint Martins. He completed his BA there and went on to complete his MA in February 2008. Mark has collaborated with Stuart Vevers for Loewe, Bora Aksu, Christian Louboutin, Swarovski, Atelier Swarovski, Christian Louboutin, Topshop, Pinko, Crazy Horse Paris, Woolmark and Aldo Rise.

Mark designs his knits by hand on a domestic knitting machine. His work is formed onto the body as he knits. He has devised innovative stitching techniques, blending lycra with the finest luxurious yarns creating new exciting textures. He is inspired by the endless possibilities of lycra yarns, sculpting areas of tension and areas of volume over the body. 

http://www.markfast.net/about.htm  

 

I really like Marks work as its very much about structure and textures for him and thats something I'm trying to get into my work currently within our fashion project because I'm looking at urban structure. 

 

He uses a range of different yarns to make these structures and mixes different ones together to see what the effect will be of those yarns together.

 

From looking into Marks work I've been trying different yarns together like wools, cottons, and bamboo to see what they do when knitted together and then washed and of course the wool wants to shrink but then cotton stays the same and then i washed the bamboo it became very stretched and a lot longer than the piece before i washed it. 

Peter Nencini- artist in residence at Norwich Castle Museum

Recently we received an email from Peter Nencini who is an lecture for illustration at NUA but is also an artist, he was asking for some help with a project he was doing at the castle in Norwich. He was asking for a machine knitter who would be interested to help him with his project called        'Half Half Scarf' so of course i was really interest in this. 

• Working title: 'Half Half Scarf'

• Duration: one week

• Workshop day 1: introduction, screening, discussion with simultaneous 'scribing' of ideas, stories
• Workshop day 2: visual research, possible use of 'Forum' archive and Castle collection
• Workshop day 3: synthesis, transcription of visual matter to gridded machine-knit designs
• Workshop day 4: production of knitted 'half half' scarves
• Opening day 5: opening, talks, showing of scarves

• Participants: selected NUA Illustration Year Three students, guest researcher-speakers, community groups directly connected to the social stories researched and visualised.

• Processes: analogue and digital drawing as a tool for thinking, research and design; hand machine knitting; connected, accessible digital and craft processes.

• Precedent: a number of previous workshop-events involving in-time creation of glyph-pattern-units for stitched and knitted works, in collaboration with Sally Nencini and other designers at or with public arts institutions (each workshop title carries a link to its doumentation): 

• Premise: 

• Dialectical potential of the half-and-half football scarf; traditionally an expression of cordiality or antipathy 
• Liverpool and Norwich; when football stories become social stories. Initially, a focus on Justin Fashanu's iconic volleyed goal at Carrow Road in January 1980, scored against Liverpool at the height of their domestic and European pre-eminence. From a Liverpudlian family, this was (and still is) my foremost visual memory connecting then and now. The goal has accrued meaning over time, partly for its audacity and then for the story Fashanu as one of the first top-flight black players in English football; then, still, the first and only openly gay footballer.

• Method: to discuss, debate, scribe, investigate and realise a visual 'kit' of surface-glyphs which are applied and produced as an edition of hand-machine-knitted 'half-half-scarves'. Each scarf carries a faceted narrative through its imagery, so functioning as discourse rather than banter. In this sense, it can be seen to align with the campaigning work of Kick it Out.

 So from reading the project i was really excited about meeting with Peter and getting involved with the project

For the first day we were up at the castle i got to meet some of the illustration 3rd years and also Jess and Nick from Note Well Press and then i was just getting used to the knitting machine KH950i which is Sally's ( Peter's wife) knitting machine. It was really good to be able to use this machine as we don't have one at university, so i feel i really gained from being about to use it 

The KH-950i is an electronic knitting machine with a built in computer with patterns already programmed into it and you are also able to input your own patterns that it will memorise

In the images above and below you can see the knitting machine and some of the samples i had made from the built in patterns on the machines computer 

 Below is an  image of a wall Peter and some of the illustration students did which was with colours and objects related to the project, i really liked being able to see how other people work and lay things out and found working with different people a really good experience, i feel it has given me more confidence to talk to other people

Peter then invited me for tea and to meet with his wife Sally who is a knit designer. She was able to show me how to input your own patterns into the knitting machine, shown in the image below it was like playing a retro computer game.

 

I was also shown Sally's studio where she runs her business from, it was so good to be able to see how Sally works as its something that i will hopefully do when i finish university

Sally's work was so good to see as its so bright and she does a range of different pieces and not just one thing, so it was really helpful for me to see and talk to Sally about her work and i feel i could talk to her if i ever needed any help 

 Throughout the week i carried on getting used to the knitting machine and trying out different designs and yarns that would work for the Half Half Scarf.

 Shown above are some of the designs Peter and the others came up with we all wanted to try and do a fade out type knit to have the football teams colours fading into the pink

It was good to see everyone ideas, i also brought in some punch cards from my machine so they could start to understand how the machine reads patterns so it was easier for them to understand what would work and what wouldn't as a pattern for the machine 

It was really good to be there in the Castle all week so i was able to talk to people who came into the exhibition 

Most people who come straight to the knitting machine as it was a thing the recognised from there childhood either them using or remember then mothers using to make them clothing, it was really interesting for me to here people memories that they had attached with the noise of the machine going or the machine itself

At the end of the week we started to bring one of the final scarfs to being made we had a few troubles along the way with getting the machine to take the pattern and not get caught on the floats as there was a lot, so we decided for me to bring in my punch card machine where it could deal with the floats better 

 Below is the one half of the finished scarf with has the Liverpool and Norwich colours fading into the pink

 We were really happy with how the scarf has come out, but we are going to carry on the project and get a few more scarfs out there and try and get the scarfs to be worn at a game would be great so still more to come with this project yet

Work placement - Trident Cars

For my other work placement i went to Trident Iceni Cars in Swaffham

I thought i would try something different that would teach me more about things i hadn't tried before

On my first day we got introduced to everyone that worked there and then we went and got shown how to use the industrial sewing machine which was similar to a normal sewing machine so was quite easy to pick up. 

We first learnt just how to do straight lines and keep them straight, then when we had done that we were shown some hand finishing techniques the picture above is called the twist stitch where i have added another colour by hand to the machine straight stitch 

 We kept getting the hang or doing straight stitch and adding hand stitching to that, but we then moved on the next day to double line stitches where the machine sews two lines at once

 From this we then added hand stitches to the double line and made a stitch called steering wheel stitching 

After getting the hang of how to do both these stitches we then were able to move onto alcantara and continue to get our stitching perfect 

We then had to come up with some designs for our own door card, the image above is my final design. All the lines had to be perfectly measured otherwise it would all look wonky and out of place when put onto the door card, so this process took a while to make sure it was all perfect

 Once i had done all the machine stitching on the piece i then had to stretch the piece to glue it to the door card fibre glass. After this is was time to add all the hand stitching

I chose to have twist and steering wheel stitch

Here is my final door card, i am really happy with how to came out and feel i learnt a lot about how important it is to make sure what you are doing is perfect as it really does make such a difference to the final piece

Work placement with Catherine Tough

For our current project we are asked to find somewhere to do a work placement so with this in mind my first thought was what do i want out of this? And what i really wanted was an insight into owning and running your own business. 

So from that i went and sat down and wrote out several people who really inspire me and have the job i hope to have myself one day.  

From this i decided to email Catherine Tough who has her own business and studio in London, she replied to my email and said she would be willing for me to go and work with her for a week. 

On my first day i was introduced to Catherine and Chloe (the in house knitter) and shown around the studio. I was then put to work quality checking socks that had just come in from Portugal where she gets her socks made. After i had checked all the sock i then had some others that had already been checked and i had to steam, tag and pack them all.

I did this for most of the week but i really enjoyed just being in the studio as i feel i still learnt so much just from being around Catherine and Chloe and seeing how they run Catherine's business and what really happens on a day to day basis.  

I was mainly packing orders for The Spirt of Christmas fair at Olympia in London where Catherine would be having a stand. 

It was really good to see the set up she had in the studio, as you can see above there was three knitting machines all set up with motors above them so Chloe didn't have to be sat there doing one piece at a time she could have three pieces all knitting and still be doing other jobs so they could get a lot done in a day.

 Photoed above is a desk in the studio, i took a photo of this as i like how you can see a mood board and how import it is to have your ideas and inspiration in front of you so you can come up with new ideas and thoughts.

After my week with Catherine i feel that it really helped me in realising what else is involved with having your own business not just the creating. I really enjoyed my time with Catherine and Chloe and they were really helpful with any questions i had.

After i had finished my weeks placement Catherine then emailed me and asked if i would like to help out at Olympia Spirt of Christmas Fair and of course i said yes and I'm so glad i got to go to the fair as it was such a good experience. 

I really enjoyed being on the stand with Catherine as i was able to talk to her customers and see peoples enjoyment and reactions to her pieces. 

I feel really lucky to have been able to help out on the stand as it was an experience i wouldn't of been able to have on my own and I'm so glad i went and did it.

 Since being on work placement with Catherine I'm still in regular contact with her and i feel i have gained an invaluable contact from doing the work placement with her.