About Me

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I am a gypsy! having been born and raised in Yorkshire, England I left at 21 and lived in many places including Germany for 5 years. This resulted in my always striving to move on to the next level of my life. The one thing that remained constant is my need to create. Eventually I went back to university and graduated with a first class honours degree in fashion and textiles majoring in knitwear design. I am now back in Yorkshire and a professional in-house hand knit designer for a well known UK pattern and yarn company.

Friday 23 October 2009

'AFTER ALISON' DRESS.....

Ode to Alison! During the Knitting and Stitching show I demonstrated the art of free-form crochet using yarn left overs. It resulted in this cute very wearable on -trend dress, which I have named after my lovely friend Alison Friday (knitsandpearls blogspot) This is because she is an expert at free-form and the colours I thought were very her. Funnily enough at the same time she has created a number of items in these said colours...go check her out.
Close up of some free-form style patterns within the skirt...question is can I ever be truly free-form? Since when working on this I used my dictionary of patterns I have collated over the years in my head! So can it only be free-form if it is random stitches and not pre-documented patterns even if this is from memory?
Making use of the patterns as a window to frame the other side of the skirt of the dress, where the photography focuses on the inside of the dress.
Side view showing how the thicker crochet pattern emphasizes the bust and waist.
The dress used mainly Acrylic and Mohair yarn left overs, which were put together to graduate in colour, the cross over between colours was formed by mixing more than one yarn strand at a time.
The dress is quite full at the hem, so it billows out and is longer at the back than front. It is ideal to wear over a top and leggings/jeans/coloured tights.
The front fastening made use of some of my pre-made brooches since I finished this dress on my stand at Alexandra Palace. (More brooch kits will be available at the Harrogate Knit and Stitch show) I was quite cold in the first few days but while sat making this dress I was much warmer.
The back has cross over strap detailing.

3 comments:

Tilly Rose said...

I absolutely love your dress! I have never tried freeform crochet but would love to.I really want to have a go over the winter months. I said hello to you at Ally Pally and thought your work great! I gave you a mention on my blog, tillyroseblog.blogspot as I was very inspired.....come and say hello (I'm a newbie to blogging)
Happy crocheting Karen x

Angel Hatton's 'QUIRKY LITTLE KNITS' said...

Welcome Karen....Both myself and Alison will be at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show if you are around please come say Hi (again!)....for me Harrogate will be like going home. X Welcome to the world of blogging..beware it's addictive! If I can inspire one person a week would make me a very hsppy designer!

https://indoorplantspotsanddoilies.blogspot.com/ said...

Love it, love all the photos. And thanks for dedicating it to me. I think that this could be a good thing to do promotion and linking, like minded blogs and bloggers.

I think that I will do a re run of my dress that I made inspired by you;-)