Optical Illusion with Embroidery

The third exercise of the year in my Creative Embroidery Course had me quite out of my comfort zone. The theme was creating optical illusions with stitch and transparent quilting. Not being a quilter, I had no idea what transparent quilting is and found it difficult to find any instruction online.
So on with the challenge of drawing and cutting up the images to create an optical illusion. This part of the exercise went well, and I was amazed at the illusions created by using such simple shapes.

So hard to believe that the same sized shape is retained in the cut up collages!

Then the rest of the exercise was all guess work. I got the part of cutting the pieces out of felt and placing them between two pieces of organza correct. I now realise after receiving feedback from my assessor that I should have quilted along each of the felt pieces to keep them in place between the organza. I did something far more creative! Well that's what my very gracious assessor said! I thought it was very sweet of her to say that...

It was also suggested that instead of using a patterned fabric as a background, a plain white would have distracted less. I think that decision to use a babushka fabric is indicative of my confused state of mind while I did this embroidery . I should know "less is more". Having put a place of white paper behind the work really does improve it. Although the feedback was not entirely positive, I really enjoyed the optical illusion exercise and learnt a lot more this month than before - and that is what doing this course is really about!

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Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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