The recent wave of platforms giving fashion fans the power to design their own clothes is rapidly growing. From things like Uniqlo's UTme T-shirt customisation app, to the in-house clothing design service offered by Yr Store (who also recently released an app), playing the role of designer has never been easier.

Taking this idea one step further however, is a new project from Barcelona-based designer, Gerard Rubio. OpenKnit is an open-sourced knitting loom that can be built at home for a (relatively) modest amount, around the £430/€550 mark.

What’s also interesting about this, aside from being another further step down the path of democratisation in fashion design and production, is the supporting ecosystem that’s been built to help budding clothes producers. Knitic, developed by Marc Canet and Varvara Guljajeva, is a software system that allows users to easily input the designs of the clothes they want printed, and DoKnitYourself is a platform created by Takahiro Yamaguchi that lets users share designs they’ve already created.