A defining moment in my career—and an opportunity to learn endangered knitting skills from some of Britain’s finest craftspeople.

I’m incredibly honoured to share that I’ve been awarded a QEST Scholarship.

QEST, the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, is a charity of the Royal Warrant Holders Association. It supports talented craftspeople in developing exceptional skills and preserving vital areas of British craft.

For me, this Scholarship means one thing above all: I can begin reconnecting the links in a disappearing chain. And it feels like a now-or-never moment.

Why this matters

When I founded Genevieve Sweeney more than ten years ago, I did so because I could not accept what I was seeing happen to the British knitwear industry.

I had spent my early career designing and developing knitwear for global fashion brands, many with a great heritage of British manufacturing, even if they no longer made here. In my spare time, I travelled around the UK visiting yarn mills, knitting factories and specialist makers. In the evenings, I bought and restored old knitting machines from craftspeople who were retiring so that I could begin making in my own studio.

I soon realised I was taking on far more than a machine. I was inheriting their tools, their passion, an expression of themselves. Each machine carried the history of a maker, a livelihood and often an entire community built around the knitwear industry.

They all told me the same story: an extraordinary landscape of British craft had disappeared, the younger generation had no interest in the skills and moved away, communities collapsed, and a few makers still held on, hoping for the work to return.

During the ten years I have been running Genevieve Sweeney and manufacturing solely in Britain, I have watched more links in that chain break. By 2020, I could no longer produce the hand-intarsia knitwear with which I had launched my brand. It is a rare and highly skilled technique in which individual colours are laid by hand onto the needle bed, following a chart to build the design row by row.

It was a true cottage industry, with each stage carried out by a different specialist maker. First the milling disappeared, then the linking. Eventually, I could no longer construct the garments at all.

Over the years, I have watched small factories close and generations of artisans stop knitting, with no one to pass their skills and knowledge on to.

These are not skills that can be relearned later from a book. They lie in the nuances and lessons gathered through a lifetime of working with natural fibres such as wool and cashmere, understanding how each yarn behaves, responds and changes.

The machines may be old, but they were built to last, and each has its own character. Knowing how to run, adjust and maintain them is a craft in itself, and that knowledge, too, is at risk of being lost.

The masters who hold this knowledge have retired or are preparing to do so—and quite rightly. Many are now in their seventies and eighties, having spent a lifetime knitting. But when they stop, their knowledge risks disappearing with them.

At the same time, as factories modernise, there is less demand for traditional hand-led processes. I have watched specialist skills disappear from factory floors at an alarming rate. New technology can knit an almost complete garment with very little finishing required beyond washing, making it increasingly difficult for factories to justify the cost of employing highly skilled artisans and paying them a living wage.

It is also becoming harder to find experienced makers or a new generation with the opportunity and desire to learn from them. Without skilled work, there is little incentive to train. Without training, fewer people are able to carry out the work.
It is a cycle that can no longer sustain itself.

What the Scholarship will fund

The QEST Scholarship will support four areas of specialist training that come together as one programme—four broken links being rebuilt:

• Hand intarsia with a master knitters in the Scottish Borders and Wales, learning how to graph designs and knititng instructions, learn to knit hand intarsia techniques

• Advanced linking and garment construction, developing the highly skilled techniques needed to join knitted panels and construct beautifully finished garments.

• Sock manufacturing with my current sock knitter in Derbyshire who has worked in the industry for 60 years, learning how to make the highest pair of socks from yarn preparation, knitting and finishing with running and maintenance of machines.

• Advanced invisible mending, learning the specialist repair techniques needed to care for exceptional knitwear throughout its lifetime.

Alongside this practical training, I will join the QEST Professional Development Programme delivered by Cockpit. This will help me build the business structure needed to make heritage craft commercially sustainable, not simply culturally important.
Because these skills will only survive if they have a living, working future.

What it means for the future

Last year, we brought an industrial knitting machine into our Hertfordshire studio were we knit 40% of our production. This year we welcomed our first apprentice 

Watching her learn and seeing her progress from shadowing our makers to linking her first production garment has been one of the most meaningful moments in the business.

Rather than following the traditional government apprenticeship route, we created a training programme tailored to the specialist skills our studio needs. With grant support, we funded a month of intensive linking training, followed by hands-on learning in the studio.

Within three months, our apprentice was contributing to production. Six months in, her skills and confidence have grown enormously. It has shown me what is possible when someone is given the time, specialist training and opportunity to learn properly alongside artisans.

The QEST Scholarship turns that beginning into a foundation.

Once I have completed this training, our studio will become a place where these skills are not simply documented or demonstrated, but practised as part of everyday production. It will be somewhere the next generation of British knitters can learn properly, from someone who learnt directly from the masters while they were still here to teach.
That is what I mean when I say:

Craft can’t skip a generation.

It does not end with me. It is about the next person, and the person who comes after them. We are now looking for our next apprentice to join the studio.

The Scholarship will unfold over the next twelve months, and I’ll be sharing the journey as it happens: the master craftspeople, the machinery, the techniques and the pieces this knowledge will help us create.

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