I’ve played before with some mixed media designs, combining origami with ceramics. This piece is a first attempt at combining origami with knitting.
The wavy form is similar to a shape I’ve used in a few previous designs, especially my wavy split bowl. This form is folded from a rectangle, with pleats that release near the top of the form to create the waves.
The knit piece is mostly a simple seed stitch with increases to create the waves, plus a bit of ribbing to create the fold points on the corners. Similar to my ceramics pieces, I made the knit piece first because the dimensions are a bit more challenging to control as precisely. The number of stitches I added in each wave was planned to match the proportions of each pleat in the origami form, which is why the shapes came out so similar.
One of the new challenges of this piece was figuring out how to stiffen the knit form with something that soaked into the yarn and didn’t show on the surface. It turns out that a couple coats of methylcellulose (well know to many origamists for making paper crisp and wet-foldable) works fairly well, along with some wire to hold the shape in place while it dries.
A few more views of the two pieces together:
