A New Way of Working with Knitting
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with something completely new in my creative practice — capturing knitted lace with sunlight. Between watching my children explore the garden and stealing short bursts of time at my knitting machine, I found myself drawn to this simple yet magical process. There’s something so alive about watching textures transform under the sun, and it’s given me a fresh sense of curiosity and play in my work.
From Machine to Sunlight: Capturing Lace
It all starts with knitting on the machine whilst my youngest son naps. As a knitter, I’ve always loved the structure of stitches — how tiny loops can build into something bigger. Over the last few years I’ve focused a lot on texture,but with these prints I wanted to highlight the detail of stitches and yarns. Using open fabrics like knitted lace let the light pass through and made the stitches themselves the focus, turning familiar knitting textures into something you can see in a completely new way.
I lay the knitted swatches onto light-sensitive paper and let the sun do its work. It traces the shapes of the stitches and leaves behind a rich indigo memory of the fabric. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way — prints that were too faint, edges that didn’t quite line up — but each attempt has been a lesson and a moment of discovery. Plus I’ve been finding ways to use these mistakes!
Watching the Indigo Bloom
When the exposure is finished, I rinse the paper in water. This is the part I love most: the deep indigo blue begins to bloom, and the shapes of the stitches appear like a secret being revealed. It was so exciting to see the prints develop, to see which yarns picked up the light the best, to see little hidden details I hadn’t noticed before. I worked with a variety of yarns- even the nylon monofilament worked so brilliantly. The thrill of waiting for the print to develop in the water was amazing. I loved having my older son with me watching it change, with many a “why?”.
No two are exactly alike, which is part of their magic. They carry both the precision of the stitches and the unpredictability of sunlight — a balance between something carefully made and something completely out of my control.
Mistakes, Experiments, and Play
I love the experimentation: testing which stitches catch the light best, layering yarns, seeing how shadows play across textures. Some days I only get a few minutes, other days I can line up multiple swatches to dry while my children play nearby. Each print captures a fleeting moment, not just of the knitting, but of my life at that time. It felt like a fitting process for this stage of my life, too — working in small pockets of time, where little fragments build into something whole. Just as each stitch adds up to a fabric, each fleeting moment of making in between caring for my children became part of this work.
The mishaps, mistakes and under exposed prints still have so much beauty. Some of them were blurry, or I’d not exposed them long enough, or I’d missed some stray ends of yarns. But I’ve cut them up and used them in several one of a kind art pieces, some woven through knitting, or added into the structure of the knit. Each one was something learned and a part of the process.
What’s Next: The Full Reveal
While I’m still keeping the full prints and artworks under wraps for the full reveal next week, I couldn’t resist sharing a peek into the process — the experiments, the textures, and the little moments of delight that happen along the way.
I can’t wait to share the finished pieces with you next week. In the meantime, you can find glimpses of the process — swatches, textures, and inky indigo moments over on Instagram or Pinterest.