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Sunday 8th May 2011
11am to 4.30pm
£55* including materials, lunch, tea and coffee.
Jelly, 42 Market Place, Reading, RG1 2DE

A one day workshop for beginners or for those wishing to refresh their machine knitting skills.

Hosted by Emma Bradbury, this workshop will be an introduction to the basics of machine knitting. You will be taught how to cast on and off and create swatches of hand-tooling techniques.

Emma Bradbury is a recent ‘Knitted textiles’ graduate from The Royal College of Art. Since graduating Emma has worked with British fashion brand DAKS. She was commissioned to design hand and machine knitted garments for their womenswear Autumn/Winter 2011 collection which was shown at London Fashion week.

For more info about Emma and her work
visit: www.emmabradbury.com

Places are limited. To book your place please email
emma.bradbury@network.rca.ac.uk

*Special introductory price

One day while knitting with my mum…

Exciting! I thought.

I think my mother spotted my obvious disappointment.

‘Trust me, you need one,’ she said. I wasn’t entirely convinced but I could see her enthusiasm so I said, ‘yes please!’

My present arrived and stayed in it’s box for a few weeks. Then I took it along to knit night and had a surprising amount of fun with my new swift and ball winder!

Wooooooo wooo! It spins round and round!

Thank you Wildfennel for capturing the moment!

I love knitting machines and like learning about all the different types of machines. I have worked with a range of different machines during my time at Knit School from super whizzy all singing and dancing Shima Seiki knitting machines which can knit fully fashioned garments without seams to hand pulled V-bed flat and domestic machines.

Domestic Knitting Machine

Last week I was in Scotland working at a knitting factory and I was in my geek element checking out the new machinery. One machine which I found interesting was a warp knitting machine. It can take up to 56 cones of yarn to knit depending on how wide you want the scarf to be. The rows are knitted vertically rather than horizontally and each cone represents the vertical column of needle loops. The stitches are constructed in a zig-zag/figure of eight style.

Weft knitting on the left and Wrap knitting in the right

I found it fascinating and loved all the colours. Here are some photos of the machine.

Finished scarves.

Geek Wrap knitting fact:

The antenna which transmitted images of the Apollo 12 luna landing was warp knitted. It was made from gold plated metallic yarn and weighed less than 28 grams to 1 squared meter.

Acknowledgements: Knitting Technology by David Spencer