I conducted a WORKSHOP with RMIT textile students in 2020, on the prototyping of knitted material. Handmaking is used in the mock-up process in fashion design as a regular practice, but the use of the word craft, or artisanal skill is still ambiguous in the context of an industrial landscape;particularly in the field of knitting. Often as a designer I will test out a design by hand to consider its potential production. In other design disciplines this is called the prototype, or prototyping processes. As the knitted sneaker is positioned in the cross-over of apparel and industrial design; for this workshop I used it as a conduit to experiment with the relationship territory between craft and design. Th3 workshop set about to seek new ways to explain design processes, which can lead to generating a conversation about future ways to practice design.
The article ‘Expertise and creativity in knitwear design in the International Journal of New Product Development and Innovation Management’, discusses Knitwear Designer Burnout as a significant phenomenon. Sheer innovation is always seen at the start of the cycle of a designer’s career, and which then filters down to standardised product that aligns with wider taste as the designer develops more experience (so they can generate more volume to reach a broader customer base and meet the sustainable profit business needs of a brand).
But the article offers a finding in that “Being creative isn’t just producing something new and different. The challenge is to create something both novel and appropriate. In the fashion and knitwear industries this means producing something that is fresh and different while being true to the company style and brand image, and meeting both the customers’ needs and expectations and the company’s commercial and manufacturing requirements.” Stacey, M. K., Eckert, C. M., & Wiley, J.(2002).
It's only after context and perspective arrived at through experience of working for other brands, that I learnt to understand the balance of innovation with standardisation, and which adds competitive advantage to a brand.
Stacey, M. K., Eckert, C. M., & Wiley, J. (2002).Expertise and creativity in knitwear design. International Journal of NewProduct Development and Innovation Management, 4(1), 49-64.
Winter2005 capsule. Wool. Machine Knitted on HandFlat Domestic Knitting Machines. I produced this collection after working for 2 years freelance for a middle range garment brand for a more conservative demographic target market. Working with that product line, helped me hone that experience into a more wearable range for my own brand, but still bringing to he process experimental developments in stitch, form and knitted structure that is signature of my own creations.
3D Knit2011. Left: I was invited to use this knitting technology as part of an exhibition called ‘the craft of machine knitting’; an interesting contradiction because these 3D machines are a hands-off industrial knitting process. To craft an output is to find a way to bring some serendipity to this mechanical knitting process, a machine that is designed to make mass produced template based designs. It knits a garment in one whole piece without seams. Even though it makes a garment in3D, the programmed templated designs are based on the 2D flat pattern cutting system, so tends to make the garments look flat, and still consequently2D. So what I’ve created here is a way to build some dimensional quality to the knitted form, to create something authentic that’s not a template design, dropping stitches to instead make threads float across the textile. But also to get this opportunity to work with a knit technician to experiment and play with this machine, is a rare event for a designer.
Right: Collaboration with Melbourne design company – Lightly; developed with Textile and Design Lab,Shima Seiki 3D Knitting Machine AUT University, Auckland.
Yarn Design & Recycling in Industry: Designing a Yarn Product for the Construction Knitting Projects - This project in 2010 entailed working with a local New Zealand woollen mill to use up their remnant fibres from previous production runs. When I researched yarn production I found that the manufacturing and processing of wool is either dominated by mass production on one end of the scale or hobbycraft on the other. Mass production quantities out-scale a niche design product for cost viability, and hobby craft out-costs an end product for a competitive wholesale and retail resale. The discovery of waste fibre at this local spinning mill solved this problem of fibre supply resource meeting production viability for a niche product. Instead of concealing the base material of the rainbow of coloured fibres pre-spinning, I chose to exploit the recycled characteristics of the yarn blend. When spun the yarn has a mashed mix of yarn colour with indiscriminate random dots of pure colour that remain throughout the yarn. This is an aesthetic proclamation of industrial innovation faithful to its process and purpose, a solution relevant to a growing post-mass-industrial awareness. Recipient of 2011 Melbourne Design Awards: https://betterfutureawards.com/mda2011/project.asp?ID=10072
The CONSTRUCTIONKNITTING idea has grown since its inception in 2009 where it began as a project to stimulate new interest in knitting and make it relevant to design culture - by defying specific contexts and genres of knitting. The project has been presented at Sydney Design Week at the PowerHouse Museum, been the recipient of Melbourne Design Award in 2011, the topic of postgraduate academic research rigor and peer review in the UK, published in educational forums for secondary school and tertiary students (and in the Finnish language), and has crossed boundaries between hobby craft, design, fashion and knitting technologies. Most importantly the project has landed on the laps of many who get to knit, which out of a sense of purpose and happiness have got to create something that’s characterized by personalization, and which can’t be found in bought mass manufactured fashion. The sharing of knowledge has always been intrinsic to knitting culture; (but new to design culture). It is almost an expectation that a knitting pattern or knitting skill should be shared. With the aim of integrating platforms of Knitting and Design, my sharing of the ConstructionKnitting project provides the tools and resources to enable the user to engage in design process (as deep as they wish), and not only just follow a pattern. The intention is to bring about a new consideration of what knitting is.
The CK Triangle Projects Garment Collection is retailed at the independent design store 'THE SERVICE DEPOT', https://www.theservicedepot.co.nz/collections/nikki-gabriel This collection proposes to generate a new type of design model that can integrate the high and low industry features of hand knitting within the same fashion artefact to reflect a more networked approach to design; between the designer, producer, consumer and retailer. Here the garment is available to purchase, and the knitting pattern is also shared through the Construction Knitting book. This collection is produced on the auspices of slow fashion ideals, which is small batch production, with the use of ecologically sustainable materials, and made by hand locally and ethically. Through this series of creative projects, this Construction Knitting collection/shared-pattern project proposes to develop new representations of DIY knit designs that can contribute to a plausibly collapsed hierarchy design practice space. “The production chain(of slow fashion) is short, the individual steps from the fibre to processing remain visible. The revival of older craft traditions and the use of small manufacturies promise garments which are long-lived and durable. The goal is not quantity, but quality and resilience, and thus a more careful use of resources.” (Wolf 2015)
A collaboration with what began as New York City's tiny neighbourhood knitting shop in Soho and is now a thriving online store housing their exclusive own brand knitting yarns - PURL SOHO. Purl Soho are the yarn sponsors for the Construction Knitting Book supplying me with all the natural fibre yarns where I write about their properties in the Chapter 'Classification of Yarns and Fibres'. I have designed a pattern particularly for Purl Soho's Tussock Yarn,which is available as a download on this website. The Construction Knitting CIRCLE V.1. pattern is knitted in this superfine 60% Kid Mohair and 40% Mulberry Silk yarn blend. I wanted to maintain the weightlessness of this yarn by knitting it on bigger needles so that it has a cobwebby finish. The circles when joined cascade like clouds over the body and maintain the structural form and shape due the the seam lines. This is a gorgeous garment and object and is worth every bit of patience and time to handknit each circle.
The purpose of using the geometric shape for the Construction Knitting projects have been to investigate how it’s used as a design construct in wider design discourse,in order to reflect it in the process of knitting. This has meant addressing the contextualizing of knitting and the challenges this poses. My research showed that knitting’s material posed a problematic frame of reference in design because it’s seeped in sociocultural meanings, and exists in its own language. My question became “what if knitting can be explained or visualized in design terms?” Can we describe knitting as a constructed object - and physical participation in design process– not just something that is only soft, feminine, cosy and warm. As Roy Behrens on ‘Art, Design and Gestalt Theory’ quote Lupton &Miller; “design is, at bottom, an abstract, formal activity” in which the … subject matter is secondary, added only after the mastery of form”(p.301). The image shows bast and paper fibres knitted in geometric shapes exploring pattern, scale and relations of form. (Bast fibres are plant fibres that are brittle and firm)
The fundamental ideas of the Construction Knitting Book is that "knitted fabrication enable the creation of not only flat surfaces, but curved and ruffled surfaces that apply and interpret three surface geometries – plane, spherical and hyperbolic" (Black, S, 2024). In other words, straight, curved and ruffled. Experience this magic in knitting as the book guides how to easily change shaping (increasing and decreasing of stitches) to adapt the surface geometry of knitted structure from basic plain knitted horizontal rows and vertical lines of stitches.
