a knitwear designer
In and around these lovely shores that we all call home are little pockets of creative hubs. Workshops, sheds, studios, barns and outside spaces that all have the same purpose in mind, to house our imaginative and productive minds.
Often the remoteness and solitude helps us along the way and keeps our minds focused on what we design and create. Jessye works out of a small barn on her family’s land. A compact space but that certainly doesn’t hinder her ability to craft what she designs.
Now, Jessye by her own admission admits that she’s always been creative going as far back to the age of 4 when her mother first taught her to knit which stimulated her creative thoughts. That fascination and love of knitting continued throughout her younger years, her teens and then onto her pursuing a degree in Fashion Knitwear and Knitted Textile Design.
After finishing her degree it was back home to Cornwall, we always return don’t we, where she started developing a small collection of her own knitted accessories and selling them in local markets. From there, she continued to further develop and design her knitwear collections over the next few years and then she finally set up her own business where we find her today.
What yarns do you work with Jessye? “I create all my knitwear using beautiful, natural and biodegradable yarns. These include silk, mohair, cashmere, a variety of wools (merino wool, lambswool, British wool) and sometimes I'll use cotton and linen too. I would like to further explore using British wools, from British fleece and spun here in the UK, as I believe this traceability of our clothing is important”.
“Over the past year, I've been focusing on my accessories collection”
You’d certainly be fooled in thinking that knitting is all about a set of knitting needles and sitting in a chair all day, that’s completely far from it. Jessye uses an old school hand powered industrial knitting machine. The same type of machine if fact where she homed her skills at Uni. These machines are the type that would have been used in factories across the UK and Europe from the early/mid 1900’s. There’s no digitally programmed modern machines in this barn, just old school kit.
Today Jessye, sells her knitwear direct to customers at craft markets and events and also into a select number of UK retailers. She told me ”Over the past year, I've been focusing on my accessories collection of hats, scarves and hand warmers, however I now intend to focus on making more garments”. At the moment Jessye splits her time between knitwear design and a few days admin work but her longer term goal is to turn her business into a full time entity.
Good luck and thanks Jessye. RD
