Woven into this remarkable works of fabric sculpture are incredible details, from metallic sheen and scratches on a recreated pay phone to grime and fish skeletons on dirty dishes (complete with fabric “water” pouring into the sink).

Working out of Beijing, China, Mongolian artist Gao Rong sews scenes from her own history, drawing on time spent in past apartments, family homes and familiar streets. At the same time, the objects she chooses are easy for anyone to relate to.

Her “meticulously crafted and embroidered pay phone,” for instance, “replicates the chips and scratches of a once-shiny public” utility, preserving the memory of a modern relic. Structurally, the work employs wood, metal, sponge and foam as shaping materials, all covered in detail-driven cloth.

In her own way, Rong is preserving a family tradition, adapting a legacy practice to create a new kind of art. In her more elaborate settings, it can be hard to tell that embroidery is the visible expression, but once realized, that lends a kind of ambiguous softness to nostalgic scenes.

More about the artist: “Gao Rong takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. In banal moments of the everyday – waiting at a bus stop, making a call from a public phone, collecting the mail, catching a cab – she sees a deeper significance. She re-creates quotidian things from her student days and from her life today as an artist in Beijing, documenting her existence in a dramatically fast-changing city. With her hyper-real embroidered sculptures she is recording the memories of a 1980s generation and their experiences of a transforming post-Mao China.”

Her projects intentionally question tradition: “Think of Chinese embroidery and you tend to imagine dragons, phoenixes, and blossoms applied with tiny, delicate stitches – a feminine craft from the imperial past. Gao Rong subverts this notion of decorative ‘women’s work,’ creating large-scale 3D works in stitched fabric wrapped around an armature of sponge, steel frames and wire.”

“Exact representations of peeling paint, moldy shower rooms, electrical fuse boxes, public telephones and bus timetables replace the traditional motifs. Embroidery has become her visual language … it appears astonishingly real. On closer inspection you see that every single detail is embroidered fabric … evocative and nostalgic.”

Borrowing logic from the 3D printing industry, Kniterate lets users turn ideas and designs from digital files to one-off wearable garments in hours. Able to “print” shirts, scarves, sweaters, dresses and more, the machine is aimed at enabling customized creations as well as rapid prototyping.

Compact, portable and affordable, the gadget itself links into computer and mobile apps – creatives can build out ideas in Photoshop, build them in Kniterate’s device-specific application, then send them to straight to production with the touch of a button.

The application comes with a number of preset patterns that can be used but the intuitive interface is also designed to allow for easy from-scratch creations, even by people with limited digital design experience. Even in cases there the final product will be made via other methods or materials, this machine allows for iterative design experiments to test size, fit and styles.

The system is also designed to reduce waste from off-cut materials, printing with the exact amount of material needed to make a particular piece. The device can carry up to six yarns at a time to span an array of colors and materials – it is also made to be compatible with off-the-shelf yarns, making it more flexible and affordable than printers (often designed to make money from material sales rather than the machines themselves).

Imagine your grandmother presenting  you with a knitted facehugger, dwarven helm or a life-sized boyfriend pillow for your birthday instead of a scratchy wool scarf. The world of knits goes far beyond beginner’s patterns for sweaters and caps, occasionally encompassing entire rooms or covering military tanks. This collection of weird knitted and crocheted things might even inspire you to break out a pair of needles yourself.

Facehugger Mask

Well, isn’t that cute. It’s a cozy little alien face hugger, just like you always wanted.

Brutal Knitting by Tracy Widdess

‘Brutal Knitting’ is a fitting name for this ongoing project by artist Tracy Widdess, which stretches the craft far beyond its humble origins of warmth and practicality. Her highly unusual knit works include some of the most bizarre hats you’ve ever seen, and a replica of the Lament Configuration puzzle box from Hellraiser.

The World’s Cutest Penguin Sweaters

Australia’s oldest man, 109-year-old Alfred Date, put his 80 years of knitting experience to work to create the world’s cutest sweaters for a bunch of oil-covered penguins after a spill on the Australian Phillip Island. The sweaters keep the penguins from ingesting toxins and prevent water from getting trapped under their oily feathers, which can cause them to freeze.

Gimli’s Dwarven Helm

“The helm I based directly on the helm that Gimli wears in the Lord of the Rings movies, the beard was my own design with massive creative input from my brother,” says DeviantArt member SadDaysCrochet of this creation.

My Knitted Boyfriend

If it’s a little lonely in your bed, but you don’t have the patience that a real flesh-and-blood boyfriend requires, there’s a solution. ‘My Knitted Boyfriend’ can be worn like a terrifying bodysuit by a real person, or stuffed to create a life-sized man-shaped pillow.

Surreal Knitted Room by Olek

The fiber artist known as ‘Olek,’ who’s responsible for yarn bombing practically every surface you can think of, knitted an entire gallery space for a piece called ‘Keith Meets Arch of Hysteria,’ a tribute to artists Keith Haring, Annie Leibovitz and Louise Bourgeois.

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Knit Wit 17 Fantastically Weird Fiber Art Creations

Whether you want to call it a new art form or a simply a hipster hobby, an artist France is pushing street-side string art in amusing new directions.

Not quite your grandmother-in-rocking-chair approach, Urban X-Stitch creates colorfully cross-stitched pieces along the lines of yarn bombing and knitted graffiti.

So far, these subjects are mostly tame – bright logos and cute animals mixed in with only a few things that look more like spray-painted tags, but the potential is there for something more.

Another neat possible direction in which to take this: pattern sharing between artists and places, the same way cross-stitching in its traditional setting can follow guides and designs.