Week 13

~ knitting ~

This week Hannah learns how to do machine knitting, ultimately making a wristband for her final project.

Several weeks ago Alex led a fascinating recitation about textiles. Has someone who has done a great deal of hand sewing and some knitting, as well as being fascinated by machines, I found this recitation totally captivating. Thus when I learned that Alex was teaching a wildcard week on knitting, I quickly signed up!

Unexpectedly, machine knitting is a very complicated process indeed. As difficult as I ever thought making 3D CAD models ever was, knitting is way harder. The reason is that there is a complicated geometric mapping between the type of pattern you want and the set of stitches that achieve it.

For his own research, Alex works on a tool called KnitSkell for automating the fabric design process. Full details of his project can be found here.

For the wildcard week session, Alex put together some wonderful documentation on the theory and practice of machine knitting.

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the Design

The KnitPaint software:

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the Machine

The machine in CSAIL is the Shima Seiki Wholegarment.

Here is a slow motion video of the mechanism in action. Truly unbelievable.

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the Results

And finally, sewing one end of the fabric around the watch clasp,

Since the pattern we used stretches in the lateral direction, it was hard to predict how wide the watchband would be, despite making measurements on another piece of fabric that used the same pattern. In the future, I would like to increase the number of knits and pearls in the middle section so that the wrist band is the exact size of the watch clasp.