‘Encounters with Bounce’, Ingrid Pettersson’s MA graduate collection from KHIO, explores movement, bounce and playfulness of knitwear. The garments are designed as rectangles in rib, knitted on Dubied hand-knitting machines. Each knitted rectangle, colour blocked or stripy, is then linked together to find the right pull, weight and direction of the garment with the aim of creating as much bounce as possible. This has resulted in a series of springy knitted dresses, skirts and tops that bounce in response to the movement of the bodies, a process Pettersson sees as a dialogue between the garment and its wearer. As its immediate interface, the garments are entities that interact with the body, move with it, and act as an extension of it. Rather than exploring what clothes mean, Pettersson asks what they do and how they affect us. Each piece has been developed after a series of tests of people running, dancing and walking wearing them, and the length of the knitted rectangles, and whether they should be double or single thread as well as the direction of linkages have been created in response to the trial process. To Pettersson her work is activating wear, not active wear.
