Showcasing Virtual Knitting and our innovative Virtual Library in collaboration with Suedwolle Group at Pitti Immagine Filati 2024.
From Tuesday 25th till Thursday 27th of June | at booth A4 at Pitti Immagine Filati, Firenze – Italy

Feel invited to explore The Future of Knitwear at Pitti Immagine Filati 2024. We have developed physical and virtual garments powered by our esteemed yarn supplier partner, Suedwolle Group. At Pitti Immagine Filati 2024, we will showcase these created garments, the Virtual Knitting method, and our innovative Virtual Library to explore, demonstrate, and inspire the potential future of knitwear through digital innovation.

Virtual Knitting technology enables designers to explore endless possibilities, where creativity, efficiency, and precision thrive. Our Virtual Library serves as inspiration and gives access to an extensive collection of digital samples for your designs, featuring detailed patterns, refined textures, and top-quality yarns powered by Suedwolle Group’s premium yarns.

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The Dress: A fully fashioned garment, knitted in 14gg, with a knit structure in a plated rib with a transition into wide floats. It generates extra width by creating stitches and dropping them off. The multi-stepping narrowing technique used allows for achieving extremely narrow angles. As for yarn is used, a merino wool from the collection of Biella Yarn by Suedwolle Group in 1x 2/48 + 1x 2/48 (two colors plated together).

The Jacket: A fully fashioned garment, knitted in 7gg (E7.2 gg machine), created in a 3-dimensional structure with double jersey flaps on the single jersey base by manipulating the multigauge technique. The flaps are longer and shorter due to goring. The interlock flaps push themselves down without the need for takedown force. For the jacket we used 4 colors of a 2/30 merino wool from the collection of Biella Yarn by Suedwolle Group, each color is plated with 2 plies of TPU. TPU allows us to manipulate the waviness of the flaps.

Virtual Knitting: Pioneering the Future of Flatbed Knitting
The fashion industry is undergoing a significant transformation, where digital products are becoming an essential part of product development. Virtual Knitting represents our vision for the future of flatbed knitting, emphasizing the need for fashion to embrace digitization, much like other design fields have done before.

Project Goal and Specifics
The primary goal of this project is to explore, demonstrate, and inspire the potential future of knitwear through digital innovation. By collaborating with Suedwolle Group, we integrate expertise from the very beginning of the product’s lifecycle, aiming to create truly digital twins. While achieving perfect digital twins for knitwear is challenging, early adoption allows us to identify and address difficulties, positioning KNITWEAR LAB as a pioneer with its Virtual Knitting initiative.

“The best part of the project was that we could combine all the different knowledges, from yarn to stitch to virtual garment, in one project.”
Lyske Gais – Founder of VIRTUAL KNITTING

Unique Aspects and Differentiation
KNITWEAR LAB is well known for its innovative knits and complex, fashionable knitwear design. Their expertise lies in the physical product, understanding how it should feel and behave from stitch to garment. By teaming up with 3D software experts trained in other design fields, KNITWEAR LAB ensures that the virtual is truly connected to the material. The textures used in our 3D garments are derived directly from the programs used to knit the actual garments, ensuring a close connection between the physical product and its virtual counterpart. This integration allows us to preview yarn choices, structures, and placements before knitting actual samples, saving time and materials.

Comparison with Other 3D Simulation Apps and Digital Fashion
The textures we generate are in an open-source format, making them accessible to any 3D modelling software. This flexibility allows us to adjust, design, and experiment extensively within the digital realm, without being bound to a single system. You can choose the 3D modelling package that suits your needs best, making our approach highly versatile. Therefore, there is no need to compare our solution to other simulation software, as all can be integrated and utilized seamlessly.

As for digital fashion, while there is a large audience primarily on social media and in the gaming world, the range of digital fashion closely connected to physical garments remains limited, especially for knitwear. Here, we have the opportunity to set the tone and lead the way making the digital part of the physical knitwear product.

Building Our Stitch Library
This project marks the beginning of building our stitch library. Over the past ten years, we have knitted a vast array of amazing structures, creating a whole wall of intricate designs. Now, we will document and digitize these structures, allowing them to serve as inspiration and be used digitally to design new garments. Each structure in the library will also have a data sheet connected to it, forming part of a Digital Product Passport. This will ensure that all necessary information about the materials and processes used is readily available, facilitating better tracking, quality control, and sustainability. This extensive library will be an invaluable resource for future projects, blending our rich history of knitwear innovation with cutting-edge digital technology.

Development Challenges
One of the biggest challenges we face is accurately visualizing knitwear, which often features complex structures, yarns, and physics. Current 3D software struggles with this complexity. However, through creative use of available features, we can achieve impressive results, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in digital knitwear representation.

Benefits for Customers and Users
For designers, the benefits are substantial. They gain more influence and freedom during the design phase, no longer fully dependent on knitwear technicians to translate their designs. The ability to experiment with knitted swatches in the virtual realm while maintaining a connection to reality enhances creativity and efficiency.

Future Perspectives
Looking ahead, the future of Virtual Knitting is promising. As technology advances, we anticipate more accurate visualizations and seamless integrations between physical and digital products. This project lays the groundwork for a future where digital and physical knitwear development processes are indistinguishable, offering unprecedented possibilities for innovation in the fashion industry.

Join us as we redefine knitwear, one stitch at a time. Explore, engage, and experience The Future of Knitwear Innovation with KNITWEAR LAB and Suedwolle Group.

You can find us at the booth A4 from Suedwolle Group at Pitti Immagine Filati,
Fortezza da Basso, V.le Filippo Strozzi, 1, 50129 Firenze Italy

https://filati.pittimmagine.com/

Feel free to attent the event via our LinkedIn.

Discover our projects and get inspired by following our Pinterest boards and pins:
KNITWEAR LAB
Biella Yarn FW 25/26

We look forward to seeing you there!

Knitwear design & development by Evgeniya Dolgopolova, Ula Zelaznowska, and Ia Kahkonen at KNITWEAR LAB made using the latest Create software by KM.on and the flatbed knitting machines from STOLL by KARL MAYER
Virtual development by Lyske Gais, Ula Zelaznowska, and Milou Mensink at @virtualknitting using #Vstitcher by BROWZWEAR
Virtual pattern maker & modelist | Inez de Jong at KNITWEAR LAB

Photography by KNITWEAR LAB