Knit- Day 3

Today was the last knit day. We spent the day working on A4 size samples using all the techniques we learnt over the past few days combining them all together for use in our portfolios. Before starting we learnt one last technique:

Weaving- starting with a plain stitch you bring out needles while weaving a thin strip of plastic/ribbon/fabric between them in the desired design. Once weaved all the way along move the carriage across to secure the weave in place. I like this technique as it allows you to incorporate an alternative material which adds a new textured element or you can use an alternative coloured yarn to create a flatter woven design.

 After learning this new technique in pairs we went on to start our samples. We tried to use all the techniques we had learnt in the week allowing us to create more complex designs. We tried to incorporate all the techniques we had learnt, this allowed greater practice of the stitches and meant we could see what stitches we knew well and which we liked best. I found that I liked some of the stitches better such as orange peel and honeycomb and that I could still improve others such as the pyramid/bubble and the lace holes.

From this week I have found that I really enjoy knitwear, I enjoy the freedom of being able to create something from scratch and that it has so much flexibility in being able to use so many stitches to create shapes and textures. I do feel I need more practice with the stitches in perfecting them but I did find today that I started to learn how to fix mistakes such as when I accidently dropped stitches. Making these mistakes and being able to fix them was very beneficial as meant I learnt more about the machines and was gaining a better understanding of machine knitting. Overall I was pleased with the samples we made I found the more experimental designs worked out better as were more exciting to look at than the ones that were more just stripes of different stitches. I also think if I repeated this exercise I would try using more colours combinations as would create a different variations of design.