In my work as a designer of knitting patterns, I don’t always get to choose the yarn I work with. While there is an increasing interest in the knitting community in natural fibre yarns – hopefully the trend towards synthetics of the last few decades is beginning to reverse – the majority are still grown, processed, dyed and packaged in multiple countries or even continents.
With the aid of a bursary from South-West England Fibreshed (SWEF), I set out to create a capsule collection of five unisex knitting patterns, using hyper-local undyed wool yarns created entirely within the south-west of England.
I worked with five farms, all of them SWEF members, visiting each of them over the course of a year and taking inspiration from those visits to design items of clothing that others could knit themselves. The intention is to connect knitters with the origins of the yarn they work with, and view yarn not only as a potential knitting project, but as something precious that was grown by sheep, cared for by hard-working farmers, and rooted in the land that fed them.
Marina’s patterns are now available as a downloadable e-book here on our website. To learn about the farms and designs in the collection, and the process of creating it, see her blog post and video.
Sign up here for ‘ SERGE: Growing our fibre to fashion community’ a seasonal newsletter we co-write with Bristol Textile Quarter.
Sign up here to receive SERGE: Growing our fibre to fashion community, a newsletter we co-write with Bristol Textile Quarter.
