Triptych 3 - slashes

My third cushion is made out of an old sweater. It came from Toast and it was very beautiful, was because I washed it carelessly and it got all felted.

I couldn't just throw it away could I?  So it joined my other old worn out favourites that still had some good bits in them,  Because it was so badly felted I knew I could just cut into it with out fear of it fraying.  That is how I came to the idea of doing a modern take on a slashed design. I have always been fascinated with historical costume, particularly the Tudors.  This portrait of Henry VIII in the National Portrait Gallery shows the old technique very clearly, the fabric of an outer garment cut at regular intervals with puffs of the under shirt pulled through, caught in places by gold clasps.  I wanted to use the idea in a little more random way.  

Using the Kidsilk Haze again, I knitted lots of irregular banana shapes

I began by placing the shapes fairly regularly when I first planned where they would go, but got bolder as I began to dig my little sharp pointed scissors in to snip and slash.

I pushed the woolly bananas up from the inside, sandwiching them between the cut edges of the cushion and back stitched them in place.

This one took on a nice natural curve

I thought it would be fun to use odd buttons and stitched the button holes in blanket stitch using red, green and purple wool to match.

 This cushion is the biggest of the three so it is going to go in the seat of the Windsor armchair.

So there you have it, three quite different pieces of good cloth cut from worn out garments, a handful if yarn left overs and a lot of fun.

xx

C