A Special Birthday

June is a busy month back home with both Me, my Dad and Lewis all celebrating Birthdays. Today, my lovely Willow turned 11. The best dog a girl could have, what a star.


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A Mini Adventure

As I mentioned before I’ve been really keen to start developing the samples I’ve been working on into more substantial garments.

First and foremost, I always always think about the technique and appeal of the fabric I’m designing before I consider it in the context of an actual piece of clothing, and for this reason I mainly think of myself as a Textile designer rather than a Fashion girl. That being said, I think it’s really important that I show that I can visualise my work successfully and can see my designs as they’re intended to be worn. Producing actual wearable pieces gets me more excited about what I’m doing too, so with that in mind I’ve had a wee idea to experiment with a few simple little bodycon skirts. Their shape means that I should be able to produce them without the aid of the linker etc, and their straight and simple lines should keep the emphasis on my heavily techniqued based designs.

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Some Gems

Just a few things in the online world I’ve been loving over the past couple of weeks…

Knitkicks - www.knitkicks.co.uk

I stumbled across this lovely wee site a bit randomly and ended up staying a while (sometimes I feel like I could spend weeks wandering in the world of online blogging… there is so much talent out there!) Run by Jen Jarvis, knit kicks is dedicated to catwalk and graduate knitting talent, a refreshing change from most of the other knitting based blogs I’ve come across which tend to be either a bit stuffy or centred on personal knitting projects. I especially love graduate Hannah Buswells work with her bright fairisle stripes and panels. Like me she’s not afraid of colour and everyone knows I love a pattern…

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A Wee Discovery..

Over the last wee while I’ve been trying to play around with different garment ideas. Those who are clued up on knitty related matters will know that working with knitwear raises all kinds of little bothers to overcome when it comes to constructing even very simple shaped garments.. Obviously, you can’t just knit a huge square of fabric and pattern cut into it as the continuous thread of the fabric would just unravel - disaster!
At Art School I always had access to a linker, a very clever machine that sort of catches the stitches from the different panels of fabric and stitches them neatly together.. perfect! If you look at any edge on the inside of a cardigan or the like you will see the lovely little neat edge it leaves behind.

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Fantastic Mr Fox.

Just wanted to write a quick little post to mention the one and only Mr Fox, yarn supplier extraordinaire, and my personal saviour when it comes to all things knit related!

Bury based Mr fox owns Fairfield Yarns, an absolute Alladins cave of every kind of yarn you could be looking for, with a somewhat bizarre theme of vintage railway memorabilia dotted around alongside…!

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It's business time.

Just got my shiny new business cards and I’m pretty chuffed with them. I think the mannequin design works well, and notice how the little ends of the ‘K’ and ‘L’ look like a knitting needle sort of thing… nice touch, don’t you think? :-)

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How I Roll

I thought I’d write a little post on the process I tend to go through when designing the things I make and all the things I’m trying to keep doing to keep inspiration up and keep pushing myself!

My course always put a huge emphasis on drawing, and this is something I’ve tried to keep up since finishing. I’m obsessed with geometric patterns and structures and my past inspiration has come from a huge variety of sources from fishing ports, old tiles, facades and shutters in little details of buildings.

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A Brief History...!

I Studied Textile Design at the Glasgow School of Art, specialising in knitwear after my first year. While some Textiles and Fashion Design students pass there designs onto manufacturers to produce, GSA placed alot of emphasis on us being highly trained at the manual production aspect of out specialisms as well as the design process.  Initially we were trained to machine knit on domestic Brother machines; the chunkier effect they produce means you can see the stitches really clearly and get a good grasp of all the different techniques. I was always desperate to get onto the more fiddly intricate stuff, but starting out like this really helped me learn the basic principles of how to manipulate stitches and achieve effects that could be applied when we moved onto using the lovely fine industrial machines later on.

A couple of photos of very early work…!

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My Little Studio.

Bedroom, Studio, Workshop all rolled into one!

My lovely 12 Gauge Dubied, affectionately known as Ralph (the chaps at Tortex inform me the designers at Ralph Lauren over in NYC use the same one in the initial stages of developing their stitches… love love love this fact!)

I live in the top floor flat in an old Victorian tenement street in Glasgow, and the bay window gives me loads of light as well as being such a great spot for people watching as I’m working away on my stuff…!!

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Hello There.

Nice to meet you.

After spending a couple of months buried under yarns and sketchbooks, I decided it was about time that I joined the blogosphere and got to grips with managing my lovely new website!

With the help of the very talented Ivanna over at Muymono I’ve had a little crash course in the technicalities of organising and managing galleries on my website which means I should be able to keep adding and changing things around all by myself - exciting!

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