February’s meeting: “Knitted Settle” by Cate Holland

Having recently joined this embroidery group I thought knitting was just a method by which yarns are manipulated to create a textile or fabric to make garments, think again! Cate Holland our speaker for the month incorporated her knitting into works of art titled “Knitted Settle”. She and a group of six other ladies, each with their own particular skills, set out to capture a snap shot of Settle in wool!

The finished work consists of 11 large framed pictures of varying sizes, the longest 5 feet. Cate photographed, drew and then painted the subject matter. She wanted to capture in stitch the very day that the photograph was taken. The people in Settle who were shopping that day were also to be included as well as goods in various shop windows. Ground work prepared, the ladies work began with the needles in an attempt to interpret in yarn that particular day and capture the character of the historic buildings of Settle.

The knitted pieces were finally mounted onto painted backgrounds and now Settle is replicated in wool! The attention to detail on the buildings is amazing. Looking carefully you can see sky reflected in the windows.  The textures of the different building materials are captured by using carefully selected wools and threads and a variety of stitch. Layering knitted pieces has added to the three dimensional effect of the finished piece.

Cate has produced a book of the work in progress and kindly let me snap a picture of one of the pages to illustrate the transformation from photograph, painting to knitting!

Thanks to Cate for sharing the work with us. An exhibition of the work is opening in March at the “Folly” in Settle. Well worth a visit.