Knitting samples galore

For chapter 6, I chose the knitting option A for my "constructed fabric" fun and played around with a few odd materials while trying to keep to my tree/ vegetation research theme.
Started with strips of muslin that I had dyed previously to get a handle on the size of knitting pins I'd need.

6.1

6.1 This was olive green but it hasn't come out in the photo.  Plain knitting, size 12 by 9cm. Roughly all the samples to follow are about 12x10cm at least.

6.2

 6.2 uses raffia, incorporating tiny gum nuts that were strung on green perle and knitted in along with the raffia - bit of a nightmare if truth be told since the raffia continually broke.  Detail is shown in 6.3

6.3

6.4

6.4 uses green jute gardening string, playing around here with holes and stretched elongated stitches.

6.5

6.5 is knitted up strips cut from black gardening matting (the kind that retards the growth of weeds through it, when in one piece, obviously).  I thought it amusing to tie bits of green hairy fibre through like weeds!

6.6

Since the matting was synthetic and looked a bit like Tyvek I ironed another piece of knitting to get this wonderfully lacey 2D piece.  Photo 6.6 shows the transparency of it held up to the light.

6.7

6.7 On the plastic-melting front I knitted up thin strips of transparent food bags then ironed the knitting to get a weblike structure that took acrylic paint well.

6.8

6.8 is a photo of a sample I did for a workshop I taught last year on contemporary lace structures, but I thought that it also fitted in here since it involves layers of painted melted knitted plastic bag strips then machine stitched with scrim and organza.  It's something I'll return to for the resolved sample in the next posting.

6.9

 I do prefer the finer knitting, so I went back to 2 ply crochet cotton in 6.9.  The top part of the sample uses the single yarn while for the lower half, I monkey chained the yarn before knitting.

6.10

 More laciness and holes in 6.10 (and detail in 6.11) using overlocked thread as the knitting yarn.  The bottom part is knitted from 3-5mm strips of organza with rolled overlocked edging which gives a nice shadowy effect I think.  The middle part uses a two thread wide overlock on the same organza, while the top uses the same wide overlock but no structure ie. threads only.  I particularly like the top part as the threads look like braids in their own right.

6.11

I felt that I could have made many samples with all the ideas I had on dyeing threads, completed knitting etc but stopped at this point to concentrate on my resolved sample which will appear in the next posting.