Meet the Maker

Hi everyone! I’m Taylor Sloop, the creative mind and maker behind Engineered Artistry. I grew up in Texas, but now I live in Atlanta, Georgia with my husband. I’ve been knitting since I was 10 years old, when I made my first Christmas stocking. I walked into my local yarn shop and asked them to help me make a Christmas stocking for my cousin like the stockings someone made for me when I was born. I immediately fell in love with knitting, and it’s been my passion ever since! In 2019, I taught myself to crochet from Youtube videos, and I’ve had so much fun learning new techniques and stitches in both knitting and crochet.

Christmas is my favorite season, so I have focused my creative efforts on creating pieces that I would love to decorate my home with or items to help your family keep Christ in Christmas. I especially love recreating traditional Christmas stockings ever since I recreated my childhood stocking for my husband to welcome him to the family. Christmas is all about family to me, so I create knits that emphasize family.

I’m also an engineer, which is surprisingly helpful with knitting and crochet because it allows me to do the complicated math to make the sweater fit just right or recreate a Christmas stocking. I completed my general engineering degree at Harvey Mudd College, where I also double majored in Dance (yes, I know, weird combination). Eventually, I hope to combine my two degrees to design better pointe shoes that aren’t made of leather and glue anymore. Right now, though, I am earning my PhD at Georgia Institute of Technology (Go Jackets!) in Materials Science and Engineering.

The buzzword version of my PhD research is that I study the dynamic compression and tensile failure of additively manufactured 316L SS with controlled porosity. What I really do is shoot a gas gun, basically a canon, at materials to see how they fail. I put pores in my samples to see if my samples will fail differently with and without pores. I love talking about my research, so if you’re interested in learning more, please reach out to me! I have my published papers linked below, too.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ppap.201900244

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772369021000153

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214860423000775

I’m so excited to share my passion for knitting and crochet with you and help you show your unique personality and values with my handmade goodies!