Bangarra Costume Images

Bangarra Dance is now in full tour in Australia and they've posted an album of production images on their facebook page.  There are some amazing images there of the costume segment I created.

Bangarra Dance Costume

Bangarra Dance Company's performance Patyegarang has kicked off this week at the Sydney Opera House.  This is another wonderful commission from Jennifer Irwin, Costume Designer for Bangarra; who is great to work with as she gives me free reign with the design of the pieces.  I can't wait to see this beautiful performance when I'm in Sydney next week.  

New Collaboration with Patons

I'm celebrating another collaboration with Australian Country Spinners for their Paton's yarn range.  They have have adapted my Construction No 4. triangle knitting pattern for their chunky wool/alpaca blend called INCA which comes in 18 colours. Available at all Spotlight stores in Australia and New Zealand this winter.

Triangle Knitting Construction Pattern

This is an exciting new project, having collaborated with Australian Country Spinners this winter.  These new Construction Designs are now available at all Spotlight stores in Australia and New Zealand.  While in the past I've designed patterns with squares, and rectangles; this is a different approach using Triangles in the most basic knit stitch; super easy!!  Just knit triangles in Cleckheaton Country Naturals Wool, and follow the diagrams in the pattern to join them which will make an awesome garment.

The Australian Ballet

Infinity is a the new performance by the Australian Ballet, a trinity collaboration with contemporary dance companies; Bangarra Dance, Sydney Dance and Chunky Move . I was delighted when Costume Designer, Jenny Irwin invited me to design 9 costumes for the Bangarra performance. I've worked for Jenny before, creating a costume on the Bangarra Dance 'Bush' performance, so this time it was great to get a complete costume segment for the 'dancing fish' in Inifinity.

The performance was absolutely AMAZING, this is such an exciting ballet, it shouldn't be missed. My costumes are quite dimly lit on stage, so I couldn't see a lot of the detail work in the dresses, but 2 of the dancers did wear them for the curtain call, which was a bit of buzz for me.

Here are images of my costume on stage:



and here are images of costume in the studio:







Inspiration for the "fish" - found on one of the many isolated beach walks in Hawkes Bay.



Backstage Images of the Costume fittings.

Knitted Joanie Lamp

Great Design Files post on Lightly, including pics of our recent collaboration on the knitted Joanie lamp.

Portman's Window

If you're on a Melbourne city tram one of these rainy days (sigh! I miss you Melbourne) and you think you just spotted in the corner of your eye a lot of cozy looking fluff hanging in the Portman's window; you weren't imagining it. I've made them plenty of wooli pom-poms, braids and tassels to drape their windows for the launch of their knitwear collections this week.

Urbis Design Day

Urbis Design Day is a big industry event in Auckland; collaborators of fashion and furniture designers transform showrooms into installation soirees of experiential design that involves an extravaganza of food, wine and object. Taylor paraded my knits with her winter collection, and I quote here from Thread: "The highlight of the Taylor clothing was the Nikki Gabriel handknits which were our best pick fashion wise for the whole day. NZ design at its best."
- woah!

Joanie's Lamp

A new collaboration with Lightly - working on cozy-ing up the Belle Lamp Frame , I've designed a knitted wool-angora lampshade that reminisces Swedish 70's craft. Using circular knitting technology the product chews up some knitting time so its still quite a limited edition production in that it's a slow production. First featured at Life-In-Style in Sydney 2 weeks ago, Joanie is it's name and you can see it at Lightly's new retail premises in Collingwood.

Bangarra Dance

Costume created for Designer Jenny Irwin for the Bangarra Dance Company ; 'hot wind dress' for 'Clan' performance in 2005. These images were part of the presentation I made during the artists floor talk on 12 February 2010.