Saturday, July 12, 2008

Shot

Warp is silk and cashmere in mid/darkish purple, weft is cashmere in blue-y yellow-green; the piece produces that thing called "shot effect". Can someone please explain to me how "shot effect" occurs? At one point I heard it was the same value/different hues, but now I don't think so, at least not in this case. Alternatively, do you know how to photograph it effectively?

At the moment, if you google "textile, shot" or "shot effect", you come to articles about textile workers in Pakistan getting shot during pay disputes. Which reminds me, about a month ago I received an email from Peshawar, which i thought was junk mail, but on further reading, I discovered a mill/workshop owner found my web site, and offered to have his people weave my "company's products" for a very cheap price. Yeah, right.

4 comments:

  1. Heya Megs,

    Check out this list of definitions and scroll down to 'shot effect.'

    What you're describing is a type of woven irredescence that occurs when a weaver uses complementary colors in warp and weft that are close to the same value.

    As a painter, I use this techique to make adjacent colors sing or vibrate. As a weaver, I love the visual shimmers that can take place.

    Photographing it is a tricky business and isn't very successful even with good lighting. The shimmer that happens with the actual textile, especially when the textile is woven from a lusterous fiber, often just doesn't show up accurately in photos.

    Very cool piece!

    Jane

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  2. PS -- also, some fibers naturally lend themselves to more irredescence (like silk for example)on their own once they're woven, as when the light plays over them it picks up slight variations that occured in the dyeing process, etc. -- it's almost a prismatic effect like a cat's whiskers or fish scales in certain light.

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  3. Whatever you call that structure, Meg, it's a beautiful piece. I love it!

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  4. Jane, "complementary colors in warp and weft that are close to the same value." I need to check this a bit more. I have some Indian silk swatches as I may have said somewhere, and they are of quite different values, as I think these two yarns are. Room to explore. And re. photographing, well, if you say it's hard, I can live with that. And of course the natural sheen in the fiber would explain why silk is ideal for this. My cotton mercs are good, too. I was surprised to see the wee bit of silk in the purple was able to produce this effect (obviously not as markedly as with just silks), especially considering the weft is cashmere only.

    Connie, it's a 4-end dornick twill, changing directions both warp-wise and weft-wise. It's one of my regulars, but I like to do this in bigger repeats than many I've seen in book. Oh, and even picks are vital to this, so I call mine Dornick Rectangles!

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