HAMMOCK
THE COMFORT OF A YARN
This project was done during our course Design Project 1, where we had to take any food as our inspiration and make a simple product out of it. I chose Soan Papdi (a popular Indian dessert, crispy and flaky in texture) as my inspiration. The stretching and twisting that it undergoes in the process of making Soan Papdi and the way that thousands of linear strands being layered together in a Soan Papdi is what interested me the most.
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Soan Papdi
The design process included finding keywords and metaphors, form study (transition throughout the process of making) , making paper concepts and their textile translations. I tried relating Soan Papdi to textiles, from every aspect, even from the process of making it.
Mood board comprising all the stages of my design process
I decided to take stretch as my function to work on. My final design brief was to create a seating using the technique of crochet which gets stretched when someone sits on. I used highly hand plied polyester yarn of off white colour to bring out the feel and texture of Soan Papdi.
Raw materials used
The construction of the seating began from the base radially. Initially, a single stitch crochet was made around a chain stitch of four using 82 times plied yarn. The crochet needle I used was of size 10 throughout. After completing 4 rounds, I did two rounds of half double stitch crochet using the same ply. The thick and tight circular base of the seating was of around 35cm in diameter . Then, I gradually started to reduce the ply and increase the stitch length. At stages, I also had to split into parts to create the strings. I even started adding green beads after splitting to add aesthetic value. The structure at last ends in four strings of chain stitch which is plied 28 times.
Construction
