Refraction

I felt like it was time for another op-art project.....something that gives the illusion of movement...in the sense of falling or being pulled in.

So I started playing around with Excel to create such a design.

Let's begin with a square...some random size and thickness.

Next, put another square (same thickness) inside of that; evenly spaced on all 4 sides.

Since it is exactly centered within the larger square, both diagonal lines go through all 4 corners of each square (respectively), and through the middle. No movement or illusion there.

Now...what if you offset the inner square? Slide it, on the diagonal down toward the right, and you get this:

The original top left - bottom right diagonal line still goes through all 4 corners and the middle, but the other diagonal line has now been "refracted"! (Like looking at a straw in a glass of water.) Each half now only goes through two of the squares' corners. 

Good so far.

Then, what if we make the bottom and right sides of the squares a little thinner? Maybe this will accentuate the "shift":

Indeed! And the illusion begins to take shape.

Obviously, it will take more than two squares to really give the desired effect! But if you notice in these simple models, there really are already FOUR squares! Two black and two white. Black and white will give the most contrast, so that makes the most sense here. 

But how many squares will I need?

I decided to make my actual piece 36" x 36". Big enough to really demonstrate the illusion, but not ridiculously large.

I played with different "thicknesses" (widths) for the black and white strips, for each of the top-left and bottom-right sets of fabs. Finally ended up with the thicker blacks being 1.25" (finished), the thicker whites being 1", and the thinner strips being 0.75" and 0.5" respectively. Oh....and a 1"x1" center black square.

And this results in 20 strips (alternating white and black) out from the center in all 4 directions.

So how to build this?

Every quilter, at some point early in their "career" has made a quilt using the Log Cabin Block pattern.

To do so, you start with a central square, then add strips around it (clockwise or counter). Every 4 strips gives you a bigger square (here the first one is made of a (center), a, b, b, and the first c), which is your block. It may be 4", 6", 8" and so on. Here is how that looks:

Usually, a quilt is made up of a lot of these blocks.

Here is a photo of the very first quilt I made (way back in 1995!) that shows how these blocks can be arranged:

You can see that each large block in this queen-size quilt is made from 4 smaller Log Cabin blocks. And each of those is half browns and half blues. There are so many ways to use this kind of block!

But I quickly realized that, by using this technique, I would really end up with ONE GIGANTIC LOG CABIN BLOCK!  What could be easier?  Just start in the center and keep adding on strip after strip after strip. The only real challenge was making sure that I used the right width for each black and white strip (only messed up once; had to rip two strips off and redo them). Note that the black fabric is solid (monotone), but the white is actually white dots on white.....this adds to the mind-bending illusion.

Here is the finished piece:

The illusion becomes more apparent if you stand farther back, but I get dizzy just looking at it from any distance!

I did minimal quilting: just black thread in the ditch of each black strip. Then, I mounted it on stretcher bars and it's ready to hang.

**This piece is for sale. Send me an email if you are interested.