Today I had a few hours with Simon, the CAD technologist, in the computer CAD room and for once it went really well. Most of the time when I have been in the CAD room it has never worked out in my favour. For the past few weeks, I have been struggling to get my ideas down clearly and to actually start experimenting with knitted fabrics or to start work in my sketch book. This is because I have done so much research on my chosen topic I was so confused on where to start from. So last week when we had a session with William, I chose an image that I was excited by and that related to my project and I began to distort it. I came up with different prints that I could use as a jacquard print. I made quite a few and the ones I really liked I took two images to Simon so we could knit it up. I was quite nervous when creating the prints because I wanted my knitted fabric to be quite a light weight. As my theme is very fun and colourful, I was worried that I could not use many colours in my fabric because Simon said that it would make the knitted fabric very heavy and ridged on the human body, but to my surprise, I ended up using five different colour yarns. I was really pleased with what we did as it was a sign of progression within my work and ideas, and it showed me what kind of yarn thickness I could use create the effect I wanted. I managed to do three big samples, two on the twelve gage machine and one on the nine gage machine. When I initially did the prints on the computer the colours that I chose made my prints look like African batik fabrics so I decided to change the colours of the yarn I knitted with and to my surprise that made a big impact. My prints went from looking African to all the sudden looking a bit more Caribbean. The first sample I made was great because I got to use 5 colours and I got the fabric weight I desired. But the only thing I did not like was the way I put the colours together. The second sample was my favourite because the colours that I put together really complimented each other and the colours really showed off the print. The only problem was I changed one of the yarns because it kept snapping while I was knitting. The mistake I made was I chose a thicker yarn and it made the fabric a bit heavier than the first sample that I made but overall I really like the two knitted samples. The third sample on the nine gage came out okay, the fabric weight was quite heavy but I think that it could work if I was doing a long jumper, jacket or suit jacket. The only problem again was how I put the colours together. This time, I used 3 yarns but I doubled one thin yarn so in fact I used four. As time goes on I will continue to develop these ideas and see what I can get out of them.
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
