Let me demystify the shot colour technique or what we in India call the Dhoop Chhaon effect, which is unique and special to the craft of silk weaving. Having said that, the shot colour weaving technique can also be applied to cotton, linen and synthetics
Simply stated, a colour shot is created when the yarns in the weft are a different colour than the yarns in the warp. For instance, a fabric woven with a yellow warp and a pink weft.
The technique of shot colours helps achieve new colour possibilities in textiles. For instance, you will be surprised to know that very often when you see a grey fabric, it may not have any grey yarns. Instead, it is often woven by marrying black weft with white warp or vice versa. Similarly, completely new colours can be created by using and combining yarns of two different colours. Theoretically, the technique can be used with yarns of any kind. But it is only in silk that the colours integrate so seamlessly that viewing from even a hand’s distance, you cannot tell the individual yarn colours. It is a common practice of coupling a coloured weft with a black warp to achieve a darker colour tone. For instance, using a red weft with black warp to create a maroon. Similarly, by using a white warp with coloured weft helps achieve a more pastel colour tone.
Another reason to use the shot colour technique is to achieve a beautiful iridescent colour effect. For instance, when you look at a fabric or sari woven with a blue warp and green weft, you see a beautiful variation in colour from green to blue and vice versa as you rotate the fabric or as the sari drapes in folds.
It is important to note that the iridescent effect can only be achieved on a yarn-dyed woven textile, and is most effective in silk. The unique colour effect cannot be achieved on printed textiles, or on any textile which is overdyed or piece dyed. For example, while a Banarasi Khaddi Georgette sari can be dyed into beautiful shaded colours, the shaded effect so obtained is not the same as shot colour effect.
A shot colour is also not to be confused with a multi-colour weave. The effect can only be achieved by using different colours in the warp and the weft. If we use two colours in just the warp, or only the weft, we achieve a multi-colour fabric, but not the iridescence of shot colour.
Though a very useful technique, shot colours needs to be chosen with caution. In attempting to create a shot colour textile, it is important to choose colour pairs that blend well to be able to create an attractive colour effect. The colour effect is subtle when the two colours used to create the shot are from the same colour family or are close to each other, for e.g., yellow and orange. And the best way to achieve this is by using the Colour Wheel that maps the colour spectrum onto a circle. The Colour Wheel was invented in 1666 by Isaac Newton and is the basis of Colour Theory, because it shows the relationship between the colours.
