MENU

Additive and Subtractive

I’ve been working on a skirt this week using some lovely wool fabric my mother and great-aunts had, and it’s been going very well.  This morning I set in my invisible zipper (my first zipper set into woven fabric – gasp!), and I’m pleased at the results.  I guess reading sewing blogs for 3 years means you pick up something!

But it’s got me thinking about the differences between sewing and knit/crochet – and this morning I finally hit on why I’ve not quite ever taken to sewing the same way that I do knitting.

It’s all about the addition and subtraction.

You see, when I took my two sculpture classes my senior year of college, I generally liked the types of sculpture that were additive; that is, I liked things that started from nothing and I added material, shaping it along the way.  I liked things like clay, wax-work, and plaster.

Plaster sculpting was perhaps my very favorite medium, because it was additive as well as subtractive.  Plaster bonds to itself very well, and after you add plaster to already existing plaster, and it sets – it’s like one whole piece of plaster.  You can then chip away at the material you added, for further shaping purposes.

Activities like woodwork were harder, because you had to plan things out ahead of time.  With the exception of wood glue, the place where you fasten wood together will always be weaker than the rest of the wood.  Places where you use things like nails, joints, or staples will always be weaker than the original whole thing.

Sewing is like wood: the seam is nearly always the place where a garment wears out.  It’s also a subtractive craft, to me.  Each time you shape a piece of cloth, you start by a large piece and you gradually cut stuff away to shape it (using darts, for example).  You might add more fabric, but there will always be a join.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that when I started doing sewing crafts, I started with quilting, which is much more of an additive activity.

Crochet and knitting, on the other hand, both start with nothing, and you add more and more stitches to make the thing.  If you mess up with crochet or knitting, you can pull your work out and start again (it’s a pain, but you can do it).

Whereas sewing, if you make a mistake with your cutting… well, you’ve just ruined that piece of fabric.

Do you do any other crafts other than knit or crochet?  Do you think of them as additive or subtractive?

Reminiscing about Davidson

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m heading to Davidson College (my alma mater) over the weekend for my husband’s graduation.  It’s got me thinking about how my experiences at Davidson have lead me to where I am now, designing knit and crochet.

Yesterday I told you about the Neelecraft Center, my very first LYS.  Today I want to tell you about the second of three things that heavily influenced where I am now.  The first was the Neelecraft Center, and the second would be Davidson’s Arts program.  You see I was an english major and my senior year I had fulfilled most of my general requirements.  That meant I was taking classes mostly toward my major.  As things happened, my first semester Senior year I found myself taking three reading-heavy English classes.  There were weeks where I was reading nearly three books a week, plus associated articles with the text we were studying.

It was right about that time that Lauren Cunningham, one of my close friends and an art major, told me I should take a sculpture class.  (She said this, actually, as we were sharpening pencils for one of her really cool sculptures.)  I was dubious, but a few weeks later we were working on another one of her sculptures and it was so much fun I decided ‘what the heck?’

Sculpture was amazing.  I’ve always liked to create things with my hands, and here I was being given the tools to be able to do that.  I learned how to work with wood, weld with metal, and cast in lost wax.  I got to play with plaster, and best of all, I was constantly incorporating crochet and knitting into my work.

Some of my sculptures were pretty weird.  I made a hand that’s dressed up like a clown – it was made in a rush on an impulse, inspired my the “hand anteaters” my father used to make when I was a child.

I also made a piece titled “Rebellion against the Sampler.”  The piece was inspired partly by the then incipient Crochet Coral Reef Project, partly by scrumbling, and partly by a desire to see just how far I could push crochet.  It inspired some rather visceral reactions from my peer reviewers, including one student who claimed it looked like something out of “Dr. Seuss trying to eat my foot.”  At my professor’s encouragement  I entered it into the student art exhibition, and won second place – beating people who were art majors!  It was the first time it occurred to me that I might actually be good at the sculpture and art thing, instead of just enjoying the heck out if it.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the third things at Davidson that brought me to where I am now.  Stay tuned!