AN art gallery is staging a unique exhibition by a textile artist which ‘leaps out from the wall’.

Steve Plummer specialises in ‘illusion knitting’, a process of knitting wool to create a 3D images.

Steve said the complex process of creating the illusion takes on average around 200 hours, around 100 hours to chart the light and shade of the picture and a further 100 hours to complete the hand knitting.

Among the pieces on show at the Haworth Art Gallery, Accrington, are portraits of people, animals and everyday items. Steve, from Burnley said: “My wife, Pat Ashforth, and I make up the Woolly Thoughts design team.

Pat is trained in maths and English and I am trained in maths and art. We have a keen interest in shapes and how they fit together and in answering mathematical questions through geometric means.

“Pat was a prolific knitter but did not follow traditional patterns and we developed ideas about fitting together mathematically correct garter stitch shapes to form garments. We put our ideas together in our first book, Woolly Thoughts, and I taught myself to knit.

“The ideas in this book were noted by the Brown Sheep yarn company in America which asked us to create an afghan for them. We have become best known for our design and production of large scale knitted or crocheted mathematical wall hangings.

“We even have pieces of work in The Science Museum in London as part of its mathematical collection.”

The Accrington show is free and and runs until March 16.