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Fashion, Textiles, and Knitwear Design Facilities

Our fashion, textiles and knitwear design facilities are based in the Bonington building, our dedicated art and design hub. Our lively and creative studios are home to an extensive range of equipment, enabling students to experiment with both traditional and digital practices.

Our facilities and equipment

Our students have access to a diverse range of facilities and equipment including:

  • Laser cutting and engraving facilities.
  • Dye facilities with a range of dye types.
  • Digital print facility with digital fabric printers.
  • Embroidery room with domestic machines, industrial machines (Irish and Cornely) and Barudan multi-head digital embroidery machines.
  • Knit rooms with domestic and industrial flatbed hand knitting machines and fully-fashioned Shima and Stoll v-bed digital machines.
  • Industry-standard pattern cutting tables and garment production machinery.
  • Hand screen printing, transfer print, and collagraph printing.
  • Leather and metal embossing press.
  • Weave rooms with Dobby, George Wood, and TC2 looms, tapestry looms, and Dracup digital jacquard looms.
  • Knitwear hand flat workshops, with Dubied and domestic machines.
  • Industry-standard power knitting machines.
  • Fabric store.
  • Photography studios.
  • Wood, metal, ceramics, resin and plastics workshops.
  • Computer-aided design (CAD) suites for Adobe and Rhinoceros 3D.

You’ll also have access to specialised resources across the Nottingham School of Art & Design:

  • Library resources relevant to the study of fashion, textiles, knitwear, culture and style.
  • Extensive academic journals and databases for visual research like the Vogue Archive, and Kanopy – which gives access to an amazing collection of contemporary and historical documentary resources for art, design and fashion culture.
  • The Fashion Map, a unique archive of garments, photographs and interviews representing high street fashion from the last few decades.
  • The Lace Archive, with over 75,000 samples of heritage lace.

Take a video tour

Image gallery

  • Fashion Design workshop space
    Fashion Design Facility
  • Bonington print room facility
    FTK Print Room
  • Knitwear machine facility in Bonington
    Knitwear Facilities
  • Fashion Design workshop space
    Fashion Design Facility
  • Machines in Bonington
    Knitwear Machines
  • Fashion Design workshop space
    Fashion Design Workspace
  • George Wood Dobby Loom
    George Wood Dobby Loom
  • Hand flat knit room
    Hand flat knit room
  • TC2 Loom
    TC2 Loom
  • Harris Table Loom
    Harris Table Loom
  • Dubied Hand flat knitting machine
    Dubied Hand Flat Knitting Machine
  • Juki overlock machine
    Juki Overlock Machine
  • Textile Design Student Liam Clair in our print room
    Print room
  • Complett linker
    Complett Linker
  • Bonington knit room
    Bonington knit room
  • Weave room
  • Knitwear make-up workshop
  • Embroidery workshop
    Embroidery workshop
  • Embroidery room
  • Knitwear machines in Bonington
    Knitting Machines
  • Dye facilities
    Dye facilities
    Dye facilities with a range of dye types available

What our students think about our facilities

There are a vast range of facilities on offer to art and design students at NTU whether this be the large workshop spaces, the on campus art shop or Bonington Gallery that holds many exhibitions and events throughout the year. The wider university facilities are also great, such as the library conveniently located on campus, the large lecture theatres with digital screens and recording facilities, through to the amazing Students Union that not only hosts new and exciting events on a weekly basis but has its own gym, bar and restaurant.

Sophie Clifford, BA Textile Design

The knitwear studio is amazing and so unique. If you want to study knitwear NTU is the best place to come! The Bonington shop is also super handy for picking up any last-minute bits and bobs. In addition to this the entire bottom level of the library is especially designed for Art & Design which makes it really easy to carry out research to inform your designs.

Jacaranda Brain, BA (Hons) Fashion Knitwear Design and Knitted Textiles