Tick - Tock.....

The last month has been about....programming and a yarn hunt.

Sharon and I have spent about......23 programming hours trying to solve one problem. And it wasn't even an interesting one. Long story short...we had built the pattern to do a certain thing but at no point had we given any consideration to the pleat repeats if we held one edge, no real reason too it was just another element. However what we were treating as a repeat wasn't the same as what the programme thought was a repeat so when we inserted the held area it travelled so it was in the right place to begin with but gradually moved. On the screen it should of been correct but the economisers were having their say. It is now sorted but the problem was simply finding it.....sometimes it is the little things that trip you up.

Anyways the garment is as I type being knitted....so as long as nothing else goes wrong ...please let nothing happen....I will have my finished garment for my presentation in December, PHEW.

Now I need to sort out images for said presentation and find new yarn.....think I have but I am taking nothing for granted......and work out what I am going to do for the other 5 months of my M.A. as it is looking like I will have finished these garments by the end of February or beginning of March.....see that's what happens when you font load, you end up doing more...

From Felt to Felted...

Well I have knitted down enough fabric to produce a toile in the real fabric.....and it is an enormous amout given I am constructing a gillet! Obviously after it is constructed and felted I should have a garment that fits........

The images show the fabric in strips before felting draped over a stairwell just to demonstrate the amount, put together before and after felting (on a double bed to give an idea of shrinkage) and finally pinned on the stand side by side with the felt fabric toile (as opposed to the felted knitted toile....stay with me)...

Now I have to finish constructing and press and I should have all I need to programme make the finished garment.......I love it when a plan comes together!!!

        

        

                                                      

JUM NAKAO/A COSTURA DO INVISÍVEL

JUM NAKAO/A COSTURA DO INVISÍVEL

At last I have found the designer who made the paper gowns I saw an image of in about January 2010.....so that's about 10 months of searching! Amazing to me how the sense of drama is what I am aiming for in my garments ...... and even though I saw one thumbnail when I was surfing the collection as a whole is spookily reflective of my own style. No man is an Island ....

So Long.......but the Work Continued....

It has been a long time since I have been here but I have been working hard. Most of the reflective work I have been doing has been in my journal and of course I have had the kids at home!! Term has now restarted so time to get you up to date...if you care.

I have been making headway with toiles so that is fantastic, it means the fabric now has a form that can be worn. The process has been a little tortuous as I only had very small pieces to work from so in a way it has been design by photography. Luckily this works well on the stand as I can take my images home and stitch them together in my imagination and on the computer and make a whole garment out of snapshot.

From the images I generate a pattern based on repeats of the fabric and then make a garment out of felt in order to try it out. If this works I will then be able to make a toile in the yarn by programming the machine to produce lengths and attaching them together appropriately.

I have toiled two garments and am currently finishing a third and my first real fabric toile is knitted and waiting to be put together.

Kinks in the Process

I have had two tutorials since the last post. Things are generally going well.

The 3D fabric is so nearly right it hurts!! Another session on Friday should see it finished in it's current form. In the next month or so there is a new Shima with a wider bed arriving and I want to switch across to that next term. This is for two reasons, the new machine is a finer gauge and I'd like to see this knitted in silk and the wider bed means I will be able to be more adventurous with the final design as I will have so much more fabric to play with. That said I may use the  narrow panels to construct a garment just to explore the complications in designing around the machines limitations.

I am making interesting headway with designs to accommodate the pleated linen fabric. It's hard not to revert to designing on paper so I am using photos printed in grayscale to work on top of. I have also bought some fabric that I am hoping will be perfect for one of the garments....now all I have to do is get the garment right.

New yarn cards should be arriving this week so lots to think about.

Working with linen and Whole Garment.

The last couple of weeks have been spent working with two different aproaches.

I have spent a lot of time pleating and finishing a large piece of linen so I have a panel large enough to manipulate on the stand. Previous I had been working with smaller pieces but they didn't allow the flexibility to drape on a body. I have also spent a lot of time programming to try and form a 3D length of kitting.

The large piece of linen has yielded results that have pushed me forward on garment design. I photographed the mocked up garment shapes and then put the photos on a light-box and traced over them to help think about how I could form dresses, skirts etc that draw on the potential of the shapes. Again this was not a way of working I have ever indulged in before. The benefits in the process were that I wasn't designing front and back views and then putting in seams so I could make up a garment. This method allowed me to work on a side view, or the area around the waist or bust in isolation and then move forward into a garment that takes the form more fully into consideration.

As for the 3D length of knitting I am learning an awful lot about how the Shimas' brain interprets my commands. The design system itself is very good at telling you what it doesn't like however still allows me to ignore the issues it thinks are there if I believe I have already put something else into the programme to counteract potential problems. It is like learning any language in as much as although there may be a real word or phrase for what you want to say sometimes you need to invent your own slag to really hit the nail on the head. This week I hope to actually solve the outstanding problems so I can start sampling in a variety of yarns to try and identify the perfect one for the fabric.

OH Late Again....

I seem to need at least 10 days to cogitate on a meeting before posting....but I am here now.

Last tutorial went well ....... we have the MO! I am finally off and running.

The pleats constructed by painstaking and laborious hand crochet through linen (yes this really is what my life has come to...) are ringing the right bells. There is also a lot to go at with knitting into leather......and into mesh.

Each fabric has it's own personality, the linen is feminine, leather edgy and the mesh sporty so there are three potential directions to follow......

Added to this I have the pure knit route on power and that makes 4! I am starting to think in term of 4 garments or outfits each separate but following the same line of enquiry. This could be possible if time allows.

As for now I am starting on the linen, large piece of fabric pleated and then shaped around the body from there I will do some flatwork based on the photos......