2024 Bridges Conference Fashion Show

Melissa Schumacher

Designers

Melissa Schumacher

artist

Olympia, Washington, USA

Biography

I learned to crochet in grad school and continue to use it as a creative outlet and a way to relax. I like expressing mathematical patterns with crochet because I can create the surface stitch by stitch and literally get a feel for the math. This scarf was created through interlocking crochet, where two crochet surfaces are created simultaneously and weave in and out of each other.

Looks

Image for look 'Color-reversed Möbius strip scarf'

The two "sides" of the Möbius scarf, showing that the color of the hexagons on one side is the background color of the other side.

Photographed by the artist.

Image for look 'Color-reversed Möbius strip scarf'

The modeled scarf.

Modeled by the artist; hair and lack of makeup by the artist. Photographed by Vincent Schumacher.

About the look

Color-reversed Möbius strip scarf

yarn (Cascade 220 Superwash)

2024

This is a crochet scarf in two contrasting colors. It was crocheted in such a way that the colors on the front and back are always opposites: when one color is in the front, the other color is in the back. Once the scarf was long enough, one end was flipped before being attached to the other end, forming a Möbius strip. However, even though the colors of the front and back are never the same as each other, there is no obvious seam in the scarf where the two ends are joined. This is because the positions of the hexagons in the design alternate between the center and sides of the scarf; the first row of the scarf has a hexagon in the center, and the last row has two half-hexagons on the sides. Twisting the scarf reverses the colors of the last row, so the hexagon color appears in the center and the background color appears on the sides, matching the color pattern of the first row.