Knitting Machine

So I bought myself a knitting machine, which I think might be one of the best things I have ever bought. I am having so much fun with it. a few of the costumes I am making this year have quite a lot of knitwear and stuff involved in it so I thought it would be good for that, and I also love knitting but never have the time to make a full garment by hand.
 For my first project this year I did Uglies, which is a Science Fiction novel by Scott Westerfeld. I will be making three costumes from this proejct for the costume show at the end of this year (my final year :/) We have just finished our first design project so we have finally started making so I can start showing you guys what I am doing :)

 So this is the costume that I am making first (sorry the image quality of my illustration is a bit crap, it looks better in real life i promise...) ;

  She is the main character of the book, and this is a costume that I designed for when she is living in an encampment in the forest called The Smoke. My model for this costume is the same as for my School for Scandel costume last year.
I started by making a Toile mock up for the dress

So there is a nice fitted dress with a circular skirt an fastening up the back. On top is a jumper with an open back with cowl snood collar, that I will be knitting. The dress will be made from a brownish tweed fabric that I bought when I was down in London a few weeks ago and the underskirt will be made from a cream silk noile fabric. Both the dress and the Skirt is will be distressed.
I started by knitting the scarf/ cowl first as I have never actually knitted a ful garment so I was a bit daunted about the idea of working out the knitting pattern and shaping for it.
Just a few progress photographs I took during knitting;


Both the scarf and the jumper have various cables and lacework patterns on them
The finished Scarf with the Toile of the jumper and the dress;

And Finally, I worked out the pattern for the jumper using a tension swatch and complicated guage calculations etc which were all quite difficult but it seems to be going okay so far.
I haven't done the back sections yet, but the front and sleeves are both finished.
The Front has a lacework pattern and two plaited cables down the front, although I am not sure how well you can see that.


So thats it so far, but I have a full day of pattern cutting on monday so there might be more to see soon :)

Also, I went to see Wuthering Heights on Friday, so hopefully photographs of that to follow soon.

xxx