Flit & Flutter
Fiona Billinton
An exploration of knitwear technologies, growth, and an investigation into historical material and labor practices.
Youth apparel is a highly disposable industry, textile turnaround is at its highest, and there is little agency in the decision.
Flit and Flutter designs for girls ages 9 – 14, a period in which youth are verging on significant physical growth and puberty.
My project prompts the question:
What if our clothes could grow with us? Esthetically and Functionally?
What if we could build relationships with our clothes from a younger age?
How might we learn to relate to our things, if we can grow alongside them?
Flit & Flutter is centered on a domestic knitting machine for its unique positionality as an additive process, and for disassembly and recyclability affordances.
The knitting machine has afforded this project complex patterning opportunities with fewer offcut material left behind!
Design Process and Methodologies:
My research has resituated my project and its entanglement within textile histories.
I don’t seek for my work to be situated in the market of today, but as an offering and curiosity for the future.
Current: Market and Size Grading Research
Through researching youth grading scales, commercial sizing, and parent forums online, I found four major points where kids begin to outgrow their clothing: Waist length, Sleeve Length, and Chest Width, and Armhole Diameter.
Looking Back: Archival Research
I took inspiration from the ingenuity of historic garments, from designs and times when textiles were scarce and valued highly.
Not all garments I found reflect my size grading research, and many garments are missed in the archival process lacking notoriety or nobility. Through careful inspection of images of child workers during the Industrial Revolution, I found many garments had ease along the sleeves, neckline and back of the garment.
Image by Lewis Hine
Boys Shirt: 1850s – 1899 Mezokocd, Hungary
Made from cotton, this garment demonstrates creation of form and fit through through pin tuck pleats an gathers in the shoulders.
Archive from the V&A Collection
Archived from the V&A Collection
Tarkhan Dress: Worn between 3482-3102 BCE
The Tarkhan dress was a major jumping point in my research. The first woven garment to be found just south of Cairo, Egypt. Curiously I found a connection between my physiological research on growth during puberty and the location of pleats found on the garment.
It’s important to note, learning textile history has also meant unpacking the legacy of violence, labor and coloniality that it was founded on, and continues to stand on today.
Looking Ahead: Swatch Making and Pattern Testing
Framed by my research, my swatches were geared towards adding ease, exploring releasable darts, smocking, or creating pleats that open and expand when stretched.
Smocking:
Shadow Knitting to replicate smocking or honey comb pleating.
Archived from the V&A Collection
Expandable Darts:
Expandable darts created through alternating stitch tensions and yarn weight. Pairing a tight knit, with a loose knit on holding stitches creates a bubble effect that opens up and flattens out when stretched.
In theory, these expandable darts work brilliantly, until they lose their shape in the wash.
By encasing the loose knit bobbles with a tight knit nylon blend, the wool stretched within the bobbles when pulled but still compressed and retreated to their original form. The nylon knit ensures the garment can be passed down as a hand-me down.
Swatch Tests and Design Ideation:
Swatch making and testing new techniques is very timely, and so quick iterations eased decision paralysis and validated time-consuming design choices.
The playfulness of drawing, painting and paper weaving kept me creative and iterative in my process.
Plotting Points for Ease:
Pattern Drafting:
Plotting the bobbles on the flat pattern before converting to a grid knit pattern.
Calculating Increases and Decreases:
For young girls, and people assigned female at birth, growing into your body can be a foreign and uncomfortable experience to say the least. I chose to exclude the bobble pattern from the bust area to ease discomfort and avoid accentuation during this uneasy period.
The bobbles and ribbed knit sits at the neckline to extend the strap length, and lower the neckline as the bust grows and expands into the garment.
A common experience I accounted for in my design was broadening shoulders and tightening backside of a garment. I chose to knit an open back to offer ease and flexibility for broadening shoulders.
The ribbing along the underarm serves to stretch downwards and alleviate tension in the armhole as the shoulders lengthen and expand.
I hope to illustrate the possibility of knitwear in a wide variety of contexts beyond providing warmth.
Story Telling and Construction
While spending time with my mom during the last few weeks of the project, the real archival research began. As I sewed my garment together, I learned about the many generations of women who made clothing for their families.
My great grandmother spun wool in Denmark; she would spin strands of her hair into the wool for additional waterproofing. She spun this wool, on the same spinning wheel as my mother has over the harsh Yukon winters.
