Weird & Wonderful Knitwear Designs

No this is not the title of a new book or pattern collection although that might be fun. You may remember that I spent a few days in London last week, although it seems ages ago now. On my first afternoon in London I was looking for something to do that wouldn't take too long and I didn't really fancy going shopping. So I decided to head for the Victoria & Albert Museum (the V&A). I've been to the V&A before and it's the kind of museum you could spend all day. I'm not really a museum kind of person though. And I think this is the first time EVER I've gone to a museum on my own. But I really enjoyed it.

I was most keen to see the textile exhibits. There was a ball gown exhibit which would have been fun to see but you had to pay extra for it and I managed to see some of the gowns from an upstairs floor so I didn't bother paying to see the whole thing. 

If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen some of the following pics but I did take some pics that I didn't tweet. The pics are taking indoors without a flash and they're not the best quality but hopefully they'll give you a laugh.

I've no idea who designed these garments or to me they look more like costumes or what they were used for.  They were all machine knitted and there were some interesting elements.

Lacking hips? Then this idea may appeal.

 I remember the shoulder pads of the 80s but this is a bit too extreme for me. there were some pretty lace details though.

 This garment had wire detail and was just plain weird.

 Some kind of period costume perhaps. 

 This one was mixture of knitting and crochet, also with wire.

 This one had wire and crochet in it too.

 I walked through an exhibition that showed haute couture designs through the ages. There were some real classics from some Paris fashion houses i recognised . And this was the exhibition I spent the most time looking around and I took some pics for inspiration for future designs.

Have you ever wondered what to do with all those swatches you end up with? You can sew them together into a blanket, donate then to a yarn bombing group (which I recently did with lots of my old swatches) or you can pin them to your garment. Not sure whether or not this will take off but it's an idea.

I also visited Alexandra Palace and bought some fab yarns and I'll share those in another post. I've not had time to photograph them all yet.