Takes a Piece of Me: My Manic Absolution in Five Pelts
Areas of Interest■
Conceptual Design, Print Design, Fashion Design, Typography, Environmental/Exhibition Design
Tools■
Brother Kh-230 Knitting Machine, Illustrator, Indesign, Risograph Machine
Info■
In my last semester at design school, I became increasingly enamored
with pushing the limits of our often limited perspective of what
graphic design can be and how a designer mindset can inform pedagogy
in different practices.
I've always seen a strong
connection between graphic design and fiber arts, and knitting feels
like the perfect union: each stitch is a pixel, and each panel is a
poster. Having learned how to use a knitting machine the week prior,
I decided to task myself with designing and knitting five sweaters
with bespoke graphics for my final thesis project in my design
program.
My inspiration for these designs came from five
deeply personal poems I wrote for each sweater, and I designed and
typeset a small booklet to assemble and display my poetry.
Below are photos taken from the Design Devision Thesis show, where I was able to exhibit my project.
The process for this project was extensive - from sketching an idea, to knitting a gauge swatch to see how big each stitch would be, to digitally designing the panels with each stitch in mind, to knitting them on the machine, to duplicate stitching the details, to finally piecing together the sweaters and finishing them, I spent approximately 350 hours on this project alone.
After I designed the sweaters using grids in Illustrator, I set up a grid with stitch counters so I could follow along my design precisely on the knitting machine. I averaged about 12–18 rows per hour; each panel was comprised of over 220 rows.
