For the last five months I have been on part of my placement year working for The Albion Knitting company.
Albion knitting based in Harringay London, is a high end knitwear manufacturing company, with clients such as See by Chloe, Alexander McQueen, Givenchy and more.The company fits in the market whom want 'made in Britain' clothing and it's amazing for the designers in London to have the factory on their doorstep.
The factory's interior is more than just a factory, it is a beautifully designed interior space, the entrance of the building has a sculpted stair case using knitting needle beds on each step and connecting wire frame. The company has offered me many skills to learn and develop in all the departments including Quality controll, machine sewing, hand sewing, pressing and knitting (operating stoll machines).
I have seen stoll and Shima Seiki machines in use and have learnt to design swatches on Apex 3 at Nottingham Trent which is great for a student to have the opportunity to have designs produced on machines that are used in the industry. By choosing The Albion Knitting Company as my placement year I have learnt a great deal about the stoll machines, their maintenance and servicing, how regularly everything needs to be checked, cleaned and oiled. I have learnt how to change the machines needles and for the fabric quality importance of tension which is regularly checked and adjusted on the machines.
I have learnt how to read and resolve problems which is indicated by the orange light above each machine and will stop knitting when there is a problem.
By watching the machines I have also learned and understood more how the machines work and from this I have worked out and asked questions to understand the differences between the different knitting machine models.
I have been gaining confidence and gaining useful skills in the industry. In this photo I have been re threading the newest model of Stoll machines.
Some days or for parts of a day I may be required to split yarns so there is more cones to ply on the machine or sometimes I ply the yarns together on the winding machine. The machine can be set by speed which I will adjust on strength and thickness of yarn. The machine will also be used for some of weaker yarns to wax. This makes the yarn stronger, when I was frame knitting I used a traditional wooden hand winding machine as all yarn needed to be waxed to be frame knitted due to the weight of the historic machines.
It is incredible to have the opportunity to use the historic knitting frames at Frame Knitters Museum and then work at Albion Knitting company. The huge difference in the process but also in the culture, learning about the frame knitters life style, which I now compare to Albion which the workers are a combination of skilled Chinese workers and young people from London.
When reading problems on the stoll machines the operating screen will tell you the problem. There are various problems to read, most are quite explanatory and the image above is telling me that the machine cover is open.
Besides the operating screen (which will also tell me there is a problem with a feeder). A light on the feeder will tell me which feeder there is a problem. This saves quite a bit of time which can be used to look after other machines.
This Image is representing the needles on the bed and how they would sit on front and back. The latch on the side of the needle is how the needles will transfer stitches between front and back bed. For example when a rib transfers to back bed for single bed knitting the row will transfer the stitches through the latch while the carriage moves over them.
The needle bed needs to be oiled once a day to make sure the machine flows well and to keep the machine from rusting. The brushes also require a generous amount of oil as these bush under-neigh the carriage to oil the under-neigh of the carriage.
This steaming machine takes a long time to set up (I'm yet to set it up but seen it done) but it really speeds up the process. It's a very big machine and quite intimidating at first as once the garment has been steamed to the correct measurements it moves back and into a neat pile at the touch of a button.
During my time at Albion we had a visit from Shima for an introduction to the Apex 3, a programme which we use at Nottingham Trent on the Knitwear course. It can be used by both designers and programmers to realise the design and make sure it works before handing to the programmer to give less work and more chance of the garment being successfully knitted, this cuts time and costs as there are more problems being resolved before the sample is made. As you can see in the image above there are two of each sample. They looked identical. It was only when I touched the samples that I could tell one was knitted and one was only a digitally simulated sample using the Apex 3.
In the machine sewing department I learnt how to use new industrial machines these are the button hole and button sewing machines. Normally on my own garments I have either knitted a button hole using partial technique or at university the technician will use the button hole machines and buttons will be hand sewn onto the garments.
There are many different types of button hole stitching and adjustments to be made with scrap fabric of same or close as possible handfeel of the garment sewing onto. Then once the quality is perfect the button hole will be sewn onto the garment.
I was amazed at the speed of this machine, the button has to be in exactly the right place or the needle will hit the button and break.
I look forward to writing and sharing my next blog.
Any questions I will try to under in comments under-neigh!
JoJo
To see more images and about the company visit their website at http://www.albionknit.london/
