Fashion: Yarn Style

Fine Art Inspirations for Knitting

 

 

An avid Paul Klee fan, I was irresistibly drawn to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art last weekend to see the latest exhibit, Paul Klee at Play (https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/paul-klee-play/) This intriguing exhibit features the handmade puppets Klee had created for his son’s Bauhaus performances.

 

The puppets are made of scraps of fabric, paper mâché, and found objects and they show Klee’s genius at creating vivid, lifelike beings out of random materials. As a knitter, I admire his resourceful use of objects and materials to express his point of view.

 

 yarnstylist's caterpillar monster

 

Fine art made for every day use is akin to hand knitting. After all, knitters are artful at combining colors and textures to craft beautiful objects we use every day. And fiber is a wonderful medium for art and sculpture. Moma features a magnificent installation by the fine artist Saraceno called Hybrid Webs and Spidersilk Maps in which threads inset with mirrors are suspended in mid air.

 

 

This display is interactive and some of the suspended mirrors reflect your body and face as you walk by them. This experience led me to reflect on the way that, as a knitter, the fiber webs that I am slowly crafting by hand reflect me.

 

 

As knitters, our fiber and color choices are extremely personal. This quick screen capture of a slice of my ravelry page shows my individual color scape. Have you ever looked from far away at your friends' ravelry pages to get a sense of their personal color palette?

 

 

 

I detect a strange similarity between my ravelry page and the "256 Farben" painting by German modern artist Ferhard Richter, which is one of my favorites at MOMA.

 

 

 I know that my little sweater photos do not compare to this painted masterpiece, but they are my little repository of work all the same. 

 

 

Isn’t playing with colors fun? No wonder shawl knitting  is so popular!

 

Find Your Fade shawl

 

First you pick colors you are drawn to and spend a happy time combining them in different ways. Then, once you have finished your personal shawl “painting” you can wrap it around yourself for comfort! Rather than a shawl, my next color project will be an afghan to keep our family warm in winter. Using Martin Storey’s two recent afghan KAL patterns as a starting point, I have drafted out this color chart for my blanket:

 

 

 

In the end, I feel that paintings are wonderful to look at in a museum, but I would rather have a cozy piece to keep me warm at home. I wonder about my knitting friends, and readers. Where do you draw the inspirations for your knitted projects? Or are all your color choices purely personal?

 

Beaded Fair Isle Patterns

 

 

What could be more fascinating than stranded knitting? Beaded stranded knitting! Usually, I would shy away from combining two intricate techniques together in one garment. But that was before I saw Chanel’s Paris Rome fashion show:

 

www.chanel.com

 

To me, this fabric is spectacular. Actually, most of the stranded motifs in this collection were “inspired” by British knitwear designers, but that’s another story. Getting back to the gorgeous textiles, in particular, I was struck by this sweater:

 

 

Determined to replicate the effect of beading over stranded knitting, I hunted through my old Rowan magazines. And Marie Wallin’s Anya pattern leapt out at me!

 

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/anya

  

This is a free pattern available on Ravelry, appropriate for an advanced knitter. Why advanced? The design is made up of one pattern repeat of a huge stranded block, with moss stitch above forming the upper body and neck. So in order for your color work to reach the beginning of the armhole shaping, your row gauge and that of the pattern need to match. I tested my row gauge by knitting the different stripe and moss stitch panels all the way to the top, and measured the whole piece’s length. This was a great practice run for the real pattern:

 

 

 

My swatch was considerably smaller in row gauge than the pattern until I washed it. Then it lengthened quite a bit and pulled in on the Fair Isle sections. So I am REALLY glad I created such a big swatch! This is part of my new resolution to prepare thoroughly before casting on patterns. If I had not prepared, after washing, my sweater would have become much thinner and longer than I wanted.

 

However, the more I looked at the funnel-necked section at the top of the pullover, the less I liked it. The black rectangular frame for the neck created by the design seems particularly harsh. I am not really sure it even looks great on the giraffe-like lady wearing it, because the style  emphasizes the angularity of her thin body. Imagine this style on a shorter woman with broad shoulders and a square chin!

 

 

So I have decided to continue the stranded pattern up on either side of a V-neck collar. I used the cable pattern from the hem for the neck edging. This extended line of cabling will fold round the back neck piece. Of course, it is risky to alter the pattern, but I believe I will wear it more often if the neckline is flattering and the waist is shaped as I have done.

 

Now that I have finished one piece, I am taking a little rest. it is challenge to strand AND bead a seamed garment because you have to work both techniques from the wrong side of the fabric, where you can’t see anything. Also, the beading against the fair isle background is not as visible as in the striped sections.

 

However, I am strangely obsessed. Does anyone know of any other great beaded stranded designs? I may need to knit more...