Storytelling Sweaters: Meet Artist Kendall Ross

The making of an artist doesn’t happen overnight. Being a true artist in any medium takes years of practice. Many lessons must be learned, support is needed from loved ones, and an artist needs the desire to create art on their own terms.

Fiber artist Kendall Ross has spent the past several years refining her skills and finding her artistic voice. She has been developing a unique way to make her mark in the art world. Kendall Ross is not a crafter; she is a fiber artist, and she wears that title with pride. Colorful yarn, quick wit, and knitting needles are her tools of the trade.

Kendall Ross’s Introduction to Fiber

As a teenager, Ross enjoyed crocheting. “My maternal grandma taught me the basics of crochet when I was very little. I was drawn to fiber art throughout my childhood after that.” From a young age, she discovered that she enjoyed the process of making things as much as she loved the finished product.

As her early years passed, she found herself wanting to learn how to knit. But that experience didn’t start out quite as smoothly as her crochet lessons. “I tried to teach myself to knit when I was in middle school using YouTube videos,” she said. “I failed miserably. My mom got tired of me screaming at her computer. She took me to a local yarn store in Oklahoma City. I took a beginner class there and the owner of the store taught me to knit. I continued to knit and improve throughout my childhood. When I was in high school, I also ended up working at the yarn store for the woman who taught me how to knit.”

Home Is Where Her Heart Is

After high school, Ross headed west to attend college at Pepperdine University, in Malibu, California. During her sophomore year, she spent some time abroad. She lived in Shanghai for about six months from the end of 2018 into early 2019. Being on the other side of the world made her realize how much she missed home. Her plans to finish college in Malibu were thwarted when the spring of 2020 hit.

When her college shut down due to the pandemic, she moved back to her much-beloved hometown. “I am a lifelong resident of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” she said. “I love OKC. It’s a place with lots of people working to create access and opportunity for the arts. I also love living near my family.” She finished school online and wrote her thesis on women who knitted during World War I. Despite earning a history degree, fiber arts were always in her thoughts and a constant inspiration.

History In Stitches

“I’m honestly inspired by everything,” she said. “I have a history background, so I’m very much inspired by women’s history and how it intersects with fiber arts and my own family history and traditions. In my work, I’ve always loved the process of knitting and essentially creating art out of nothing. I love to tell a story with a garment. For the most part, the stories I want to tell are about my own experiences and what I feel as a young woman.”

Given her deep-rooted ties to her family and their traditions, it is no surprise that they have inspired and encouraged her throughout her life. “Pretty much all the women in my family are fiber artists in some sense,” she said. “My mom is one of the most creative people I’ve ever encountered. She is constantly making things. … I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without her encouragement and inspiration. She definitely does not see herself that way, though, because she is constantly telling people that I get all my talent from her mom and my maternal grandmother.”

Kendall Ross’s Art

Ross’s strong sense of self and her knowing who she is as an artist led her to make an important business decision early on in her career. She does not accept commission pieces.

“I’m an artist, not a knitting machine at people’s disposal to churn out whatever they want,” she said. “I’ve found a lot of power in saying no to things I don’t want to do. I think the way I’ve been able to not burn out doing this professionally is by only knitting what I want to knit, which is my own ideas. … A lot of the time, things that are very feminine or associated with women are seen as silly, but I’ve also strived to validate my feelings and work no matter how frivolous they may seem to someone else. Ultimately, what I feel I’m doing is using this art form that isn’t always seen as an art form to tell my stories about how it feels to be a young woman.”

After years of knitting and discovering what she likes and doesn’t like, she has homed in on a signature style that any fan of hers would recognize immediately. “Like most things, knitting progress isn’t linear,” she said. “I didn’t learn to knit one day and then immediately have the skill to be able to make what I’m making now. Where I’m at now with my signature style is a culmination of years and years of work and experimentation. It’s all connected.”

Storytelling Sweaters

One look at Ross’s Instagram page and it’s obvious that her love of vivid colors is part of who she is. “I’ve had a very colorful life, and color holds a lot of meaning to me,” she said. From the colors she chooses to the words she writes and the graphics she designs, every part of her masterpieces have carefully charted out meanings. She doesn’t try to explain what story she is telling. Like a true artist, she allows the piece to speak for itself and allows other people to find their own meanings.

Knitters who follow Ross are also drawn to the pictures she posts showing the insides of her pieces. Neat lines of colorwork across the wrong side of each design showcase her talent for clean colorwork.

“My pieces are usually a combination of intarsia and Fair Isle knitting,” she said. “I used to primarily use duplicate stitch when I first started incorporating text. When that was what I was doing, I did far less planning. I would knit swatches in one color and go back and freehand with a second color using duplicate stitch. Personally, I just prefer the process of doing colorwork as I go. I also think, in general for my work, it ends up looking a lot cleaner than duplicate stitch did.”

Surprisingly, Ross’s yarn choices do not involve a lot of forethought. Like a painter choosing a paintbrush, she knows what materials work best for her. “I am the least picky person when it comes to yarn,” she said. “I hand-dye a lot of my own yarn using acid dye and bare [Knit Picks] Wool of the Andes Worsted. I’ve really grown to prefer natural fibers. I used to use a lot of acrylic just because I was able to find a lot of colors I loved. At the end of the day, I love wool and cotton, but it really is all about color for me. I pretty much exclusively use worsted weight. I can’t handle bulky yarns.”

Ross is a talented fiber artist who uses needles, yarn, a sense of humor, and a love of color to tell her stories. She has come a long way very quickly and is excited about what opportunities and inspirations await her. “Knitting is the same as any other skill: It takes practice to be able to translate the ideas you have in your head into the real world,” she said. “I look back on my older work, and I don’t even recognize it. I’m honestly excited to see what I’m making in five to ten years.”

To see more of Kendall Ross’s work, go to www.idknitthatco.com or find her on Instagram, @id.knit.that.

Krista Ann is a nomadic knitter. She travels with her husband and their fur baby, Phinny, in an RV while she designs knitwear and teaches at yarn shops along the way. Find her on Instagram @explorewithknitsy or visit www.explorewithknitsy.com.