Machine Knit Spring Class comes to an end.

For the final part of the course students receive direction from the industry, in this case Topshop and using all the skills they've learnt in the previous 8 weeks make designs with this customer and the brief in mind.

Yordanka made these beautiful experiments into neutral, textural knits.
We also looked at 'crazy bonkers' novelty knits, using placed jacquard, bright clashing colours, short row stripe, intarsia and crochet- and yes, licquorice allsorts for inspiration!

Progressing from never using a knit machine before to making full garments to a brief in 12 weeks, as most of these students did, is pretty impressive!

Crochet Designing.

When we've covered all the knit techniques we can fit into Parts 1 and 2 of the Design Workshop we turn to crochet as the icing on the cake.

One of the advantages of crochet over knitting is being able to work in any direction, so once the students mastered the basic stitches they could freestyle.

They combined crochet with knit, at a neckline or in a seam joing other pieces together.

Dan gave a jacquard swatch an interesting edge.

Looking at natural structures is always helpful for stitch and shape construction.

Cookie crocheted this twisting, organic cable- ish swatch.

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (below),that we saw last summer at the Hayward Gallery in London was an awesome achievement and provided no end of ideas!!