felted sample
At the beginning of my last week in the knit room, me and the other knitters in my class, had a tutorial with one of our lecturers. She looked over all the knit samples that we had thus far created and advised us on ways to improve our work. It was really helpful to me and gave me great ideas on how to improve the techniques and colour palette I was using. When I had begun, I was following more of a silver, grey, blue and yellow theme but had struggled with how to further develop this colour palette and decided to try more greys and copper’s. This colour range was a lot better and seemed more mature and fitting to my chosen industrial theme. So I began creating more samples with this colour range.
In the tutorial, my lecturer advised me to adhere to the idea of having lights, darks, neutrals and brights within the one piece. There had also been a green colour within my sketchbook that I had decided not to take forward within my samples, but my lecturer said it may work if used sparingly. I was also advised to add more texture to my knits, the work so far seeming to flat.
With these finals I increased the amount of needles I was using, to 90; wishing to make larger samples as the size would make the pieces look better. 
I created this sample (on the left) first and then created another that was really similar, but adding an even darker shade of grey; which does make the sample look much better. I really liked the differences in texture between the cotton, lambswool and polyester. I feel that the copper works well with the tones of grey and is definitely better than the original colour palette that I had wished to use.
Working from the advice of my lecturer, I ventured back to the knit room, taking out green yarn to work with and began working on my final samples. 
In this sample here (to the left), I took the advice of adding more texture to the knits I was making. In this, I used the technique, ‘Double Hem‘, keeping it close together at the bottom, and spacing it out as it nears the top. I feel it’s a successful final and again I like the contrast between the thin polyester and thicker set cotton.
One of the smaller
samples I had made within the first week in the knit room had been similar to this (on the right). I had liked it so much I had decided to increase it’s size from 60 needles to 90. I feel that it was quite successful and surprisingly the contrast between the copper and yellow seems to work well. Because before, when integrating the yellow with the greys and blue’s it had looked too much like ‘Lego’ colours.
kirstin louise. 