TEXTURE: Erika Knight on her inspiring new collection

Tell us about Texture and your stunning designs. What inspired this book?

I am always drawn to textures first and foremost; I think that is why I became a knitwear designer. I love fibre and stitch and playing with both to achieve distinctive effects. I actually studied Fine Art at College, but my work then was all about creating surface texture with various materials and expressive mark making. Most of my friends were in the fashion department so I spent a lot of time helping to make toiles and finishing pieces late at night before catwalk shows. This is where I learnt about form, fit and shape and how to incorporate a body into a textile.

What is slow fashion and why is it important to you?

Slow clothes are the polar opposite to fast fashion. It’s not a new phenomenon and certainly not a concept that I have invented. The traditional skills of making clothes by hand are as old as time, but somewhere along the way these processes have increased in velocity and productivity to the point where garments have become too cheap and ultimately disposable. Having worked in the fashion and textiles industry for my whole career and at all stages of production, I have witnessed the negative effects on communities and the environment when profit is valued at the expense of everything else. We as consumers have the power to make conscience, considered decisions. I believe we should reuse, recycle and repair, knit from our yarn stash, buy less and craft more.

I believe we should reuse, recycle and repair, knit from our yarn stash, buy less and craft more.

What does texture mean to you?

Crafting something by hand is by its very nature a tactile activity and the sense of touch is very important. How you hold your needles, the way the yarn feels in your hand as it travels through your fingers, the sensation of the garment against your skin when you wear it. When I see a knitted jumper my first instinct is always to touch it (Note to self:
ask permission of the person wearing the jumper first!). Yarn and texture are one and the same. But it is not only the softness of a fine cashmere or baby alpaca that I crave, but also the coarseness of a rustic hemp or the reliable durability of a traditional British wool. And what about the ways in which the final fabric can be manipulated by using a larger needle size for a fine laceweight yarn or using two ends of super chunky held together to create a voluminous bulk. I don’t think I am alone when I admit that I am a bit of a control freak, and that is one of things that excites me about knitting – not only am I able to determine the finished garment’s shape and fit, but also the very fabric, and even the fibre of the yarn used to create it!

How do you teach knitters to use their surroundings as inspiration in their knitting?

Inspiration is often an elusive idea and one that’s very difficult to pin down (usually when you are in need of it most!) There is no right or wrong way to source or employ inspiration, so you need to keep an open mind. We are constantly bombarded with digital images especially through social media, and we can become saturated and sometimes overwhelmed. So, my best advice is to get outside, take a walk if you can and really look at, engage with and appreciate your environment – be it urban or rural, city, country or coast. It sounds simplistic and it is but as we are rushing to achieve our ‘to do’ lists, meet deadlines, and occasionally just to get through the day, it is all too easy to block out your surroundings. Therefore, I encourage you to look out of the window at the passing clouds, look up at the intersection of buildings and cranes in the city, look down at the cracks in the pavement and the tiny green shoots that emerge - there is beauty in the ordinary, overlooked and mundane. The linear striation of a cliff face might inspire a subtle stitch stripe, or a pop of neon yellow lichen might catch your eye amongst the trees and translate into a contrast colour tipping on a collar or cuff, or a discarded newspaper caught in the wind may prompt you to dig out a precious paper yarn from your stash and incorporate it into your project. An art school tutor once told me that “it always comes back to the landscape”, and you know what - it always does.

There is beauty in the ordinary, overlooked and mundane

More inspiring reads from our knitting team

Fancy grabbing a cup of tea and settling in for more good reads? Check out the story of wool in wartime, top tips for sustainable knitting and meet vintage knitting expert Susan Crawford.

You show how to use knitting as a mindful activity. Tell us more about knitting and mindfulness.

The practice of making is a slow process, it involves dedicated time and an appreciation of the journey as much as the end result. It cannot be rushed; knitting has its own pace dictated by the natural motion of the arm and hand. It’s an absorbing, even meditative activity that requires concentration and focus on the present and the task in hand. The repetitive action of the stitches – in, over, under, off - can have a calming effect. Some projects will be more challenging, and it is important to give yourself time to work through more complicated techniques, and to appreciate the imperfections in the handcrafted.

In Texture, you empower knitters to create their own designs. Do you think it is important for knitters to be able to design for themselves?

People find knitting for all different reasons and not everyone wants to think about the structure and finer details of a design, they just want to be sure that the pattern they are working from will have the result they expect. Designing a pattern for a hand knitter is very different than designing knitwear on an industrial scale to be machine-made. Whilst many of the same factors such as size, fit, ease, shape, construction and finishing are the same, the mechanics of how these are communicated to a knitter requires careful consideration to translate complex technicalities into simple, easy to follow step-by-step instructions. That is why writing a pattern is a long process involving sketching, swatching, knitting, re-knitting, checking, grading and checking again. Whilst I can’t claim to be able to give you a “30-year pill” with the experience, knowhow and trial and error that I have gathered during my career, I do think that craft should be open and accessible to everyone and ultimately empowering. With just two sticks and a continuous thread the possibilities of creation are endless. This is a low-tech skill with the impressive ability to transform fibre into textile. The best place to start is by getting some yarn on your needles and exploring different stitches and textures. Design is about experimentation and learning as you go. Make time and give yourself the freedom to create.

Get your copy of Texture by Erika Knight at www.hardiegrant.com
And find out more about Erika on www.erikaknight.co.uk

Explore the joy of textured knits with these free knitting patterns to download from CraftWorld