Knitting a Hammock
In my senior spring at MIT I took the class 4.501 Creative Prototyping. This class focused on soft textiles and each student was to choose a technique to master. While others studied weaving, netting, or crochet, I chose to pursue knitting. To create a large enough, and strong enough, piece for human suspension, I used a yarn made of jersey knit, or t-shirt fabric, which was strong and had a lot of stretch. For this project, I learned different techniques to create the structure and diagrammed how the textile formed. These diagrams are shown below.
For this piece, I wanted to create a comfortable way to suspend a person in a space. This was another reason to chosse the jersey knit yarn over another material, like para-cord. I also wanted to create a piece that follows the curves of the human body. Rather than keep the initial design with basic rectangles, I added rounder shapes for certain parts of the body. I broke apart my design into shapes that could be sewn together. The shapes consist of two circles, a "mermaid tail" for the user's feet, and connecting rectangles. The "mermaid tail" was added as a way to create a more cozy feeling for the user. To suspend the hammock, I created I-chords, or knitted ropes. At various points on the hammock, small rectangles with button holes were added, and the I-chords were tied and knotted through. Overall, the piece took about a month to put together.
