This Tech Talk is a fascinating view on the evolution of Jude Skeers' knitted circles.
“How to knit a flat circle?” was the
assignment that I set myself in the late 1970’s. For the next thirty years this
undertaking and its resolution that dominated my art knitting. Medallion knitting was the title of Tech Talk
in ‘Yarn #27’, it investigated the background and process of this knitting
technique. This tech talk looks at my adventures and misadventures with
Medallion knitting.
The first framed wall hangings that I
knitted, when I set out to turn my skills in garment knitting into creating
knitted art pieces, were squares, octagons and dodecagons. Framing these
cornered pieces proved to be very unstable process as multi sided frames were
only as strong as their weakest joint. It was the collapse of these frames that
lead me to endeavour to knit a circle. Knitting, framed in a circle had to be
more stable. I calculated that I needed to start at the circumference and
decrease at the rate of four stitches a round, then decreasing faster as the centre of the circle
approached. After much trial and error, the formula was mastered. All my early
medallions were knitted in this technique from the outside to the centre. My knitting
of lace medallions pieces from the centre to the outside didn’t happen until
the mid 1980’s. Many years after mastering flat circle knitting I read the
chapter on Medallion Knitting in Mary Thomas’s Book of Knitting Patterns which sets
out a similar mathematical formula to the one I use.
During
the first six years of Medallion knitting I created a wide range of different
sized circular art pieces from 60 to 180 centimetres in diameter. Each piece
was stretched around a 2.5 centimetre thick circular hoop. I played with using
jacquard and cable techniques, separately or together. The works included
geometrical shapes, floral images and all white pieces with cabled tree motifs.
In
1982, I completed my most adventurous work circular medallion work - three
pieces each 180 centimetres in diameter. Based on an image of the Western
Australian Scarlet Banksia, they represented three stages in the life cycle of
the flower. This work involved the intertwining of jacquard and coloured
cabling techniques including reverse cabling. The work was commissioned for a
church in Melbourne.
In the
process of knitting a surface cabled piece I created The Echidna.
I
made numerous attempts at getting the cables to flatten. My original formula
for flat circles just didn’t work. Regardless of how many times I unpicked and
reknitted the centre I could not get it to flatten. Finally, as you may
recognise in the picture, I placed a broom handle needle in the centre of the
framed piece and gave The Echidna a nose. From this failed exercise came my
sculptural installation knitting. Ten free standing trees and mushrooms were
created over the period from 1984 to 1986. The largest trees were 3 metres high
with a span at the top of 180 centimetres.
Reverse
cabling in my medallion knitting wasn’t perfected until the late 1980’s with
the four pieces that formed the Sunset series. One of this series is pictured.
With this technique it was necessary to carry three coloured yarn as the rounds
were knitted. By
cabling one of the yarns behind the others it was possible to create a different
colour sky and horizon.
The most
delicate creation of my medallion knitting came in 1986 when my first web was
knitted. It is a sixteen or eight sided medallion, which although knitted with
over 100 stitches are displayed with only 16 stitches. The other stitches are
dropped to create the spaces. Web medallion knitting forms the structure of my
environmental installation art works, ranging in size from 25cm to 5 metres in diameter
and using materials as diverse as lurex sewing thread to 1 cm diameter rope.
The
Black and White patterned piece pictured is my most recent medallion. It
perfectly exemplifies a circular medallion knitted by decreasing, even down to
the segmentation and the octagon and square at its centre. In the early part of
the 1990’s I put a square and a circle together in one medallion. I knitted 15
rounds of a normal medallion square using mitre corners, then changed the
decreases process to knit a circle in the centre. In the last three
years I have returned to this technique to knit a cabled tree in a circle within
a square. I plan to expand on this to move into what I am calling my heirloom
period, calculating that it will take 20 squares to create a single panel. At
that rate I will need to knit 80 squares to knit counterpanes for my grand
children. Thirty years and counting I am still loving knitting medallions.
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