Final year BA (Hons) Fashion Knitwear Design and Knitted Textiles students at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) recently had the opportunity to design and develop a collection of swatches to showcase to UK based yarn supplier Yeoman Yarns for its annual competition. Yeoman is a well-known and long established independent small business that specialises in hand-knitting, machine-knitting and crochet yarns and is renowned as a leading supplier of knitwear yarns, especially for designers.

The students were required to choose either Autumn/Winter 21/22 or Spring/Summer 2022 following a predicted trend. Their final outcomes included a sketchbook detailing their development process, a concept board, knitted swatches, yarns, sketches of the final piece and a range of samples. Yeoman was particularly looking for creativity and innovation of stitch, colour and texture using the yarns.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for the winning student, Emma Price, who will receive 10kg Yeoman Yarns to use for her final collection and the opportunity to visit Stoll HQ in Leicester to work with Stoll GB knitting technicians to program and develop her knitwear design. This will provide Emma with an invaluable live professional industry experience,” NTU said.

Emma told NTU’s press office what it means to be the winner of this project: “Being able to have the opportunity to create a brief entirely on my own ideas allowed my creativity to run wild. I am visually driven focusing on themes that have intricate details and textures, I enjoyed creating the collection from start to finish focusing on mark making to develop through to my samples.”

“I am so grateful to have been able to take part in this competition and have my work showcased on Yeoman’s social media to widen my social media following. I am so excited to work alongside the Yeoman team and have a garment knitted by Stoll, especially with the yarn sponsorship allowing my collection to thrive. I would also like to thank NTU for allowing me to have the opportunity to apply and also providing excellent facilities to create the best possible outcome.”

Yeoman Yarns commented: “Emma’s knitting was a joyful bundle of creativity, showing highly skilled knitted swatches and had a beautiful aesthetic. The project had a great story, with fluid development from research through to final line up. She had clearly thought outside the box to produce a full body of work and had gone above and beyond to produce not only a competition submission, but a mini project.”

She had good primary research considering the circumstances of the pandemic, with a clever transition from primary research through to swatch development that showed a lovely developmental progressive journey. She used a wonderful array of stitches and techniques, that demonstrated a variety of experimentation, as well showcasing the Phoenix and Brittany Yeoman Yarns of choice in a beautiful way.”

Congratulations to Emma, who is now working on her graduate collection.

BA (Hons) Fashion Knitwear Design and Knitted Textiles

Yeoman Yarns