With reviews over and essays handed in, its time to get blogging.   My project has moved on again and as I said last time I've been looking at the single stitch.    I was fascinated by the way stitches are connected and how each one depends on  the next to form a piece of knitting, drop one and a hole appears, travelling right through the piece.   This lead me to to think about my connections and the stitches that link to form my pattern.   At this stage I was looking at the aran stitches and how when adapted they were linked to the identities of certain families. So how was I going show my pattern in a visual way.    I decided that because we all wear our identity constantly and because its invisible that I would knit a garment showing mine.   After careful consideration, I chose to knit this garment with official documentation relating to me.   The choice of material was very important.   It tells me who I am and where I've come from.    It also plots a pathway through my life.  The stitches at the back of the jacket symbolise parents,siblings, marriage and birth, and the dropped stitches represent death and loss.   The front panels relate to my marriage, children, education and health, all elements that form my identity. 

Keeping movement and motion in mind this garment shows how my identity has moved and changed over the years but also how it continues to evolve.

 Contextually, I've been looking at the work of Dave Cole, who produced a series of work called Trophy Wives and the Money Dress in 2006.   The dress, based on a Vera Wang design was knit with dollar bills.

Susie Mc Muarry is another artist who has produced a garment sculpture 'Widow' made out of unusual materials,  leather and 94 pounds of dressmakers pins.  'The prickly garment translates grief of lost love into a shorud that inflicts physical pain and repels human contact and sympathy.   Widow is the fourth in a series of garment sculptures that explore the concepts of female identity'.   It can be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Power of Making.

Cutting strips of birth certs to form yarn to knit the jacket.

buttons for jacket,  old inhaler cases melted in oven and formed in to buttons.

                                                                                                                          

                knitted jacket

                                       

                                                


  close up detail of jacket

wearing my identity

      

                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                                                        

Dave Cole's 'Money dress'

Susie Mc Murray's garment sculpture 'Widow'


                               




                                           

close up view of gown

  

Decided to break my pattern down.   I'm looking at one component, the single stitch.   By doing this I hope to make the stitch much bigger but still move them and link them together.   I started by making them with wire, but I realized if they were solid, these structures wouldn't link together.

                         

I then tried them in a salt dough form but the result was the same.   However I decided that these stitches had to move, so I photographed them and made a little movie with them.

 After looking at the structure of the stitch again I discovered that they needed to be arched to link.   I made a template in fimo, made a silicone mould and cast them in wax.   This was more successful and they move and link together very well.

                                                       


Contextually as well as looking at artists who use knitting elements in their work, I have been looking at the work of Andy Goldsworthy.

Another material I looked at knitting with was  plastic tubing.  After knitting a small section 7m in length, I put some water with food colouring into the tubing, attached drinking straws to either end and the result is that the liquid with the air bubbles move around, reminding me of the traffic flow on the motorway.  So I'm back where I started.