Another of my earliest quilts, I made this one following a design in the book Casting Shadows by Colleen Wise. This is an awesome quilting book about using color, shade & tone to create optical illusions. Since this quilt was made for the purpose of building a padded headboard, after piecing the main section I added oversize borders so there would be plenty to wrap around the headboard frame my husband built. He used plywood and 2x4 boards to construct the basic frame, and I added a thick foam pad, then wrapped the quilt around it. It is very comfortable for sitting up and reading in bed.

A closer shot really demonstrates the illusion that these are 3-D blocks, being lit from the top-left by an unseen light source. Being one of my first quilts, the squares are not as straight as I would like them to be, the stitching not as precise. I like to think I've improved with practice since that time!

This super-close shot reveals not only the wonky novice sewing skills I possessed when this was made, but more importantly the tricks of assembly that make the illusion work... Note that the block itself is really four triangles, each created by two strips of fabric. The trick is to sew a strip of your color fabric to a light "highlight" fabric, then another strip of this same color to a dark "shadow" fabric, then cut at a 45-degree angle to create the triangles. Flip the triangles around to form a square. Add the drop shadow (which is a long narrow strip, with a little of the neutral backround color stitched on at the end) and build it out like a log-cabin block. More detailed assembly instructions are in the book, but you should get the basic idea of the trick by looking at this sample.