Waves Illusion is my make for this year’s Pantone Quilt Challenge! As one of the challenge hosts, I’m not eligible for prizes, but I couldn’t resist making something to match this year’s Peach Fuzz theme. This mini quilt is based on recent paintings by @morgan_echols, which are in turn based on optical illusions by psychology professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka.
I shared a photo of this last week when it was nearly finished, and I was able to add a facing and label over the weekend to truly call it done.
The wave motion illusion shows up strongly on the screen and in Morgan’s two-dimensional paintings, so of course I wondered if the effect could be replicated as a quilt. The answer? Yes…but seeing the illusion in three-dimensional, not perfectly flat fabric is VERY dependent on lighting conditions.
This photo was taken in flat light in my sewing studio and it works! But as you can see in the photos below, the illusion starts to disappear — or disappears entirely — if the lighting conditions create any shadowing or if the quilt isn’t perfectly flat.
It’s a bit of a bummer that it doesn’t show up more strongly, but this was a fun experiment nonetheless. Making the checkerboard was a surprisingly satisfying strip piecing process, and I have a few ideas that might improve the illusion in a wider range of lighting conditions if I decide to try again.
For the sake of documentation: my initial idea was to put stitch-and-flip corners on every square but I quickly realized that 1) that would have been more time-consuming than I wanted and 2) there would have been a lot of seams to line up just right.
I then pivoted to the idea of strip piecing the checkerboard (speedy!) and using fusible applique to put small diamonds on each interaction — that’s what I was testing in the photo below at right, albeit with pieces of paper. These seemed too large/too prominent, and that’s when I had the idea to use thread and quilting stitches to create the intersection points.
Each intersection was stitched with an X using doubled-up 8wt perle cotton thread. On the back, I just cut and knotted each thread. Traveling through the quilt top would have been a cleaner finish, but I wanted to keep things quick and easy, so tying was the way to go!
Now that I’ve finished “a prototype,” as I’ll call it, I think revisiting the applique option may be worth a try, or a more prominent hand quilted stitch — maybe a asterisk/star instead of an X? Perhaps I’ll try it soon, but in the meantime, this was an enjoyable way to play along with the Pantone challenge!
The stats:
- Quilt measures 22″ x 22″.
- Fabrics are Kona Cotton in Creamsicle and Peach.
- Backing & facing fabric is Ruby Star Society.
- Batting is Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80/20 cotton/poly.
- Pieced with Aurifil 50 wt thread in #2600 (Dove).
- Hand quilted with Wonderfil Eleganza Perle cotton.
