Illusion knitting
Form of textile art
Illusion knitting or shadow knitting is a form of textile art, in which the knitting is viewed as simply narrow stripes from one angle, and as an image when viewed from another angle. Illusion knitting has been recognised as an art form since 2010, largely due to the advances made by Steve Plummer who has created several large and detailed pieces. Similar effects occur in Tunisian crochet.
Method
Illusion knitting uses two colours of yarn and is worked in stripes of two rows in each colour. Illusion knitting is based on the flat smooth stocking stitch and the raised garter stitch. It is this combination of textures which allows the image to be seen only from the proper angle.
Traditionally, charts for illusion knitting use four rows of knitting symbols to represent the stitches which the designer wishes to be seen. This makes the charts elongated and difficult to use for anything other than simple blocks of colour. These four rows make up two pairs where, in most cases, one pair is considered the opposite of the other. Where one pair has two rows of knit stitches, the other image pair has both knit and purl stitches.
The public source identifies “Illusion knitting” as form of textile art. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Illusion, knitting and Form.
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This entry incorporates text from “Illusion knitting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.