On 9 September, Vivien Graham was our guest speaker. Vivien (whose real name is Vivien Cooper) runs a successful knitwear design business, mainly using lambswool and merino to design and knit jackets in a myriad of styles and colours, which she then felts. Vivien can make garments to measure and regularly attends craft fairs to sell her goods. Her website is www.viviengraham.co.uk.
Vivien started off her knitting career at age 9 when her brother bought her some knitting needle and wool, and became an avid hand knitter, knitting everywhere she could. Years later, after seeing a demonstration of a knitting machine she bought one for herself and started knitting garments in cotton. After completing a knitting course at Southampton Institute of Further Education in Fashion Design she started selling her garments at craft fairs, and took up a permanent stall at Stapehill Abbey in Wimborne. Over the years, Vivien has collaborated with designers and retailers, who have sought her design and production skills. Vivien now sells her garments mainly through craft fairs and repeat custom.
Vivien gave the club attendees advice on felting, some key points included:
- ALWAYS do a tension square, as the tension can be affected by each different batch and colour of yarn. For instance an orange yarn may felt up differently from a green yarn, and the same yarn you bought last year compared to this year is likely to have a different tension. Always knit a tension square of [60 x ?].
- Once the tension square is complete, felt this by putting it in your washing machine on a 30 degree cycle (Viviens machine usually takes about 1hr 15 minutes to do this). Do not add anything else in the washing machine as this will impact the tension square, and you would need to replicate exactly with your finished garment.
- You should always spin the garment on as high a spin as possible eg 1400-1800 to remove all excess water, this is because when you hang it up to dry you do not want the weight of the water to drag down your garment and distort/lengthen it. Remove the garment and hang it up as soon as the spin cycle is finished.
- If you are not happy with how much it has felted up, you can put the garment back in your washing machine on a quick 15 minute wash to felt it up a little bit more.
- Once the felting is complete, iron it and you can measure the gauge/tension to work out the size of your final piece.
- For washing a felted garment, Vivien recommended hand washing, then spinning as high as possible before hanging up to dry. If you have a specific hand wash option on your washing machine (one that just swishes the garment back and forth rather than rotating it) then you can use that too, but not the wool wash 30 degree option as this would felt your item/shrink it more.
Vivien had a large collection of jackets and colours on display for attendees to view and try on, and a selection of unique handmade buttons on sale.
