We occasionally have a disaster -
We had tried to use this illusion before. We had made a hat where the tiles were embroidered onto plastic canvas. The effect worked fairly well despite being on a curved surface. We also tried it on a sweater. It didn’t work. We put this down to the constant movement in any kind of garment but realised later that this wasn’t the whole solution.
For this design to have the greatest chance of success it had to be as regular as it could possibly be. This meant it needed the precision of a knitting machine. It was made in strips, alternating black and the strongest pink we could find (We thought white would get dirty too quickly).
After the strips were made came the job of joining them together. We tried this many ways and it became obvious that it was essential for there to be a continuous black line between the pink squares, otherwise there were no lines to even begin to confuse the eye. The most accurate way was to crochet the join from the right side.
The afghan looks good. The colours are dramatic, the arrangement of squares is interesting but the optical illusion just doesn’t work. The piece is too big. If you focus on part of it the lines do start to move around but it is almost impossible to continue to look at one area without being tempted to look at the rest. When it is scaled down as a photograph, or seen from a long distance, it becomes easier to see the illusion. We still have it but Striptease rarely sees the light of day. Don’t ask why the illusion will work at the size of the café wall but will not work as a hanging – because I have no explanation for the phenomenon.
