In stitches! Intro to commercial knitwear

Last week I took part in an Intro to Commercial Knitwear workshop at Kangan Institute's Fashion and Textile Hub. The 2 day workshop touched on various aspects of the commercial process including the basics such as identifying fibres (man-made and natural), textile terminology (wales & courses, cut & sew, fully fashioned, complete garment etc) and knitting techniques (jersey, all knit, intarsia etc). 

Here are some pictures from my time at Kangan... 

Above swatches 1) - 3) Use of colour with various stitch constructions 4) 5 x 3 rib on worsted wool

5) Aran stitch - used on the gorgeously ugly "cricket" style jumpers  6) 5 x 5 cable stitch

Knitting time! This is the start of a beanie :-).. Look how fine the machines needles are; it was really quite amazing to see an item knitted so quickly with such precision on the Stoll machines.  

The final product! A lovely grey beanie with the following specs: 

♥ Made from a pre-designed template, using 2/30 worsted yarn

♥ 2 x 3 rib of 20 courses (I think...!) 

♥ Simple jersey stitch for the remaining of the beanie 

♥ Sectioned fashioning marks for tapering

I knew hardly any of the above jargon prior to this workshop, but now am able to spec a piece of knitwear :-) As you can see from the pictures I added a chunky pink pom pom and rhinestones to the fashioning marks.

Identifying gauge using the magnifying stitch counter. Then writing down stitch notations once we classified the knitting technique. 

From design >  knitting > final product. Here you can see a snippet of the Stoll machine software - understanding stitch notations is really important when formatting a design. This scarf was made using slub yarn (yarn with different thicknesses throughout) and tuck stitches to create an "open" knit.

To finish up the workshop we knitted this lovely scarf in my two favourite colours! :-) The silver "specialty" yarn is really sparkly under sunlight.

I learnt sooo much during the two days... Although not directly related to the luvfromamy product range it certainly has opened my eyes to the commercial space and helped broaden my skill set. I'd definitely recommend Kangan Institute and hope to take part in future workshops :-)

If you like to attend the workshop yourself, or see more course on offer take a look at Kangan Institute's website here