Notes on a Treble Crochet Stitch Slipover: Inspirations and Influences

Well, it's a gloomy, overcast day with heavy rain and strong winds, the stormy weather continues. We had a few sunny hours yesterday and the garden was full of bright daffodils, bravely nodding in the breeze. This is their second spring and they are starting to naturalise. Even today, they are shining like a little line of beacons.

I'm glad to be inside, in the warm, where I've been working on my crocheted slipover. Everything came in time for my few days away, and I was able to make my tension square and other samples while I was away. Since returning home, I've been able to put in a few hours in the afternoons and evenings. I'm really enjoying working with the yarn I've chosen, Rowan Creative Linen, some I already had. It's soft to work with and has a slight sheen to to it.

The pattern is interesting, too: I started with a single crochet foundation chain to give a more robust and stretchy edge to the hem; then the pattern is worked simply in treble crochet (UK) with a chain stitch between each treble to give an open grid pattern.

You can see the single crochet foundation chain along the bottom edge, then the grid pattern formed by the pattern. There's two small mistakes as well, which I've left - one at the bottom right (I had made too many stitches and needed to decrease by one) and one on the lefthand side, about halfway up the sample - it looks a bit like a chromosome.

I love the grid pattern - the architectural feel to it, the way the sculptural texture of it creates shadows and highlights, the stitches marching across the pattern like hieroglyphs or other Ancient Writing. I also love the tension between the stitches, each one held in its place by the others.

I haven't yet found the rhythm for my crochet, I'm quite slow, a row takes me between twelve and seventeen minutes, and there is some fiddling about at the end of each row as I look for the correct stitch to join in the turning chain below. I'm maintaining quite a tight tension, as I started that way, it would be easier and more satisfying if I had relaxed into a looser, more expansive tension (a lesson for another time).

I like the thoughts that come into my head when I'm crocheting (or knitting), the ideas and connections that come between what I am making and things that it recalls. I was researching Victor Vasarely as part of my Textend project, and I remembered seeing Supernovae and other Op Art and wondering whether I could create similar effects in crochet.

Source Supernovae, 1959-61, Victor Vasarely, Tate Modern. Picture by Msamoeba shared through Creative Commons Licence CC BY-SA 4.0. I saw this work recently on a visit to Tate Modern. Previously, I haven't been captured by such works, although I found them interesting. On this visit, I was more fascinated by them. I had also seen an Op Art quilt which, although I wouldn't want to re-create a particular idea, did open me to the ideas of creating a different kind of optical illusion through stitch.

I was also reminded of some of Anni Albers work, which I had seen in an exhibition at the end of 2018: I wrote about it here and here. The works that kept coming into my head, apart from Ancient Writings, were the printed and embossed works with triangles, inspired by ancient civilizations and buildings:

Source TR III, Anni Albers, 1969-70 in Tate Modern

TR III is a square printed and embossed work on paper. It consists of a gold-printed surface into which small, wide-based triangles have been embossed in a tight motif of thirty-six neat rows. Some of the triangles point upwards while others point downwards, and further triangles of similar sizes are created by the unembossed negative spaces between them. Shimmering highlights are formed where the light catches the edges of the printed shapes and where it travels across the smooth gold surface of the composition’s thick border. (Tate Modern)

This work reflects some of the things I was seeing in my own simple crocheted pattern - the reflection of light and creation of shadows, the tension between the triangles, the way new patterns are formed by the placing and inversion of the triangles. I was reminded of the Sceles pattern, with its tall triangles - a uniform pattern changed by the drape of the fabric and how it was underlaid by other fabrics, textures and colours.

My inclination was to stop following the pattern, which is for a mid-thigh slipover for beachwear, and convert it to a cardigan in my usual style - cropped, 3/4 length sleeves, a single button on the front. I also experimented by trying a row of double treble stitches, but I found it wasn't pleasing - it needed the repetition of many rows to acquire the magic. I also thought about the grid as a foundation for weaving and embellishing.

The final image that keeps recurring, even when I was watching Last Tango in Halifax, an engaging Sunday night drama, was the buildings on the Alton Estate in South West London, one of the largest social housing estates in England. Inspired by Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation - streets in the sky, cities floating in a sea of green and park land, the Alton Estate sits surrounded by Richmond Park with majestic views from the flats. Some are built on struts, open at ground level, increasing the illusion of a floating city with 13,000 residents living in the sky.

I liked this quote from Anni Albers:

Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.
(Anni Albers, On Designing, 1971)

It reminded me of Audrey Coyne and her approach to creating outfits - combining different surfaces, shiny, smooth, textured, plain; different proportions and shapes, playing with the proportions to create illusions; and how she uses colour to bring together an overall impression, to highlight or to distract and divert. Her latest video illustrates this really well.

Now, having reviewed some of these ideas, I've decided to continue with the slipover pattern. I want to see the effects of the drape in a finished piece, and how it looks layered over different fabrics and textures. Separately, I have some more of the same yarn in a different colour for experimenting with some of the ideas I've had.