Meet Dazy Chains, the tech-inspired knitwear brand combining fibre arts with digital culture

Photos of yarn transformed into hats sprawled on a bedspread: this was how Hayley Mortin began sharing her knits online. Since then, Hayley’s knitwear brand Dazy Chains has amassed tens of thousands of followers.

Her style, intimately and undeniably her own, is reminiscent of the aesthetics from the optimism surrounding a tech-forward future in the early 2000’s, while also belonging wholly to the hyper-digital world we inhabit now. CAPTCHAs, abstract AI-generated imagery, and cyber-influenced motifs are some of the designs you can find on various garments, pillows, bags, and tapestries that she knits by hand and machine.

Inspired in part by her full-time work as a UX researcher for a tech company’s AI division,  at times she discovers “accidentally poetic images… devoid of the research context”  that make for compelling designs. Hayley’s work stands out in the historically traditional fibre arts community because of how it closes the gap between the digital and the analogue.