From Studio to Stitch

Anna Wheeler ~ Founder and Designer

At times, I’m asked how I know when a piece is finished. My honest answer is: when I've worn it enough that I've stopped noticing it. When it has become simply part of getting dressed. That, to me, is the real test of whether a design is good,

i. It begins with colour

As a designer and a busy mother in my late forties. I am not driven or attracted by trends within fashion anymore. I want to build a collection that people can return to because it resonates deeply with them.

It is my hope that my designs are worn season upon season that they won't feel datedand old a year after they have been purchased. Colour is a very important part of this andmy favourite part of the development process: specifically, the particular combinations of colour that I find genuinely beautiful and that I haven't seen anywhere else.

Trends come and go, but good colour combinations that suit your natural features are timeless and never go out of fashion.

My instinct for colour is where my strength lies. Trends often flatten colour into seasonal palettes (“this year’s green,” “next year’s pink”), but what I'm trying to describe is more like relational colour, how shades interact with each other and with the wearer. 

There’s also a quiet confidence in designing this way. It says: this piece doesn’t need to prove itself by being current; it proves itself by being right. That’s rare, and it’s exactly what draws people who are tired of fast fashion.

Originality is something I care about deeply. I come to every new design asking: have I seen this before? I studied at the Royal College of Art and spent years designing for some of the most visually ambitious fashion houses, and this comes so naturally to me now, like an inner voice and is part of Cotswold Knit’s DNA. If a design doesn't excite me, if it doesn't feel like something I haven't quite made before, I don't take it forward.

Colour comes first in my process, and it comes as a feeling rather than a formula. I pull together the colours that are drawing me at that moment, and they are almost always colours I am seeing outside, in the season I'm living in. There is always a green,always a blue, always a pink and a cream somewhere in what I am drawn to, though the exact hues shift with the light, the month and what is growing.

What I have learned is that I can never be entirely sure whether a colourway is right until it’s actually knitted. The colours you place next to each other change each other. A green that seemed exactly right on its own might need to be deeper once it sits against a particular pink. A navy that looked strong in isolation might flatten a colourway entirely. I thread up the machine, I knit the sample down, and that is when I know.

The first sample is never the only one I make, so going again is part of the process, and it is, genuinely, the most interesting part. Occasionally I thread up the knitting machine in the wrong order of colours and that sample ends up being my favourite colourway. I call this a happyaccident, but one that can only happen because I am so hands-on around the machines.

            Colour is a feeling. The day takes me on a journey. I have to knit it down                               to really know whether it is right.

ii. Then comes the drawing

Once I have a colour feeling,, I begin to draw. Everything at Cotswold Knit starts on paper, by hand. No mood boards assembled from other people's images, just a pencil and sketch book. My drawings are loose to begin with. I follow the line wherever it wants to go, and I try not to edit too soon. The ideas that feel slightly wrong at first are sometimes the most interesting ones. The colour combination that seems too bold until you live with it for a week and realise it's exactly right, the pattern detail that looks too small on paper but comes alive in yarn. I've learned to be patient with my own first instincts rather thantidying them away.

For most of my designs, pattern and colour are inseparable. Jacquard knitting worksby knitting multiple yarns through a single row, bringing each to the surface only wherethe design needs it. It's what gives that depth and richness you can see when you lookclosely at one of my pieces. But it means that every colour decision is also a structural decision. They have to be made together.

The sketches are where I'm most myself...nobody sees them. These sketchbook ideas don't have to be right, they just have to be honest.

iii. Wearing it before anyone else does

This is the part of my process I feel most strongly about, and it's probably the thing that distinguishes how I work from how a lot of brands work.

Before anything goes into production, I make a prototype myself, here in my Warwickshire studio, on my smaller hand knitting machines, and then I wear it. I put it on in the morning and I live with it.. I wear it to the supermarket, on the school run and in the garden. I see how it looks and feels after a day of being worn rather than simply a day of being photographed. I pay attention to how it feels against my skin after a few hours, whether the weight is right, whether the drape holds and whether it makes me happy every time I catch a glimpse of it.

I think you can feel quality when you touch something well-made. The softness of a yarn and the way it’s been knitted and finished. The way it has a kind of bounce and body to it...that's not incidental, it's the result of choosing the right yarn and knitting it at then right tension and finishing it with care. You can feel when those decisions have beenmade properly. You can also feel when they haven't.

 

Some pieces take several rounds of prototyping before they're right. I'm not in ahurry with this stage, and I'm not precious about going back. If something isn't quitethere, if the colour reads differently in winter light than it did when I was drawing it insummer, or the fabric is a little stiffer than I wanted, we adjust it. The prototype exists precisely so that we can find these things out before anyone else has to.

iv. Our in-house micro factory

When a prototype is right, we will do a small batch of them. Being so close to production means I can make sure everything is how I want it every step of the way.

 When something needs adjusting it’s changed immediately. I pride myself in understanding and taking part in how my designs are created and made. Every piece of British knitwear that leaves this collection is made in Britain, designed in the Cotswolds, and built to be an investment piece; something you reach for year after year rather than replace season by season.

The yarns we use are chosen with the same care. Our lambswool comes from Todd and Duncan in Scotland, spinners who have been developing yarns for over 150 years on the banks of Loch Leven. Every fleece is certified by the Responsible Wool Standard. The water used in washing and dyeing is cleaned and returned to the loch. These detailsmatter to me, and I think they matter to the people who wear what I make too.

v. The finished piece

There is a moment when I quietly look and check the production pieces as if I were the customer receiving my order for the first time. What I'm looking for in that moment is simple: does it feel as good as it looks? Can you feel the quality when you touch it? Does it feel like something you'd reach for again and again, something that would get better with age?

When the answer to all of those questions is yes, I feel genuinely proud. Not in a complicated way, just the straightforward pride of having made something real, wearable and desirable in my hands and knowing all the processes it took to bring it to life.