About Mary W Martin

Shortly after I learned how to knit with slipped stitches, a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Not knowing how else to help, I made chemo caps. This led to my first design, the Cancer Ribbon Hat.  While this hat seemed very appropriate for her fight against cancer, it didn’t reflect the range of emotions she was experiencing.  I wanted to make a hat with breast cancer ribbons on the outside and the words “Fuck Cancer” on the inside.  

I was unable to create this reversible hat. So I started experimenting with creating reversible fabrics with cable elements on each side.

Over the last few years, I have developed Fusion and Fission Knitting.  These techniques use slipped stitches to create cabled motifs on both sides of the fabric.  While the techniques work for different reasons, they are similar enough that incremental developments in one technique have encouraged development in the other.  

In the fall of 2022, I published a reversible Fuck Cancer hat.  It required everything I had learned about reversible knitting to create this hat.  I am very proud that I could do what I set out to do at the start of my design journey. 

Mary Martin is a knitwear designer based in Toronto, Canada, focusing on reversible fabrics.  She draws on her engineering background as she “builds” her fabric.  Her computer experience was applied to creating reversible knitting notation.  When Mary designs it feels surprisingly like her work building financial structures on Wall Street. 

Her designs reflect what she has learned about creating reversible fabrics.