Optical Illusion Quilt Block

Today’s quilt block is a different optical illusion. Similar to the Impossible Spiral Quilt Block, but with a very different look. Get the cutting guide, watch the video, and see!

Optical Illusion Quilt Block Guide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlc7pkeL2Nk

Video transcript:

Hi I’m Tes Scholtz with tulip square and today I’m going to show you how to make this optical illusion Quilt Block super easy and fun to make and it looks really great all done up this is a 12 inch finished block when it’s in your project it’s 12 inches so hop over to the sewing machine with me and I’ll show you how to make it  

okay to start with you’re going to take your white square and your medium dark square  

these are the two biggest squares three and a half inches  

put those together and you’re going to sew them  

diagonally right down the middle  

You can either draw a line there or you can follow a line on your sewing machine like I have here  

and that’s just a thin striping tape and I’ll have a link to that in the description if you’re interested we also  

have a link to use that they now make a special  

quarter inch striping tape made just for that so we’ll link to that too  

now because I’m just making one we’re going to  

cut this off  

before you cut it you could do another seam there and then cut it between the two seams and then you would have a half square triangle  

spare piece for other projects I have a lot of those  

If you’re making a whole bunch of these blocks you would start with a larger square with start with a larger Square draw a line down the middle  

sew on either side of the line and then cut it in half and then you would have two half Square triangles and not waste so much fabric  

Since I’m just making the one it’s fine  

now we have that and you’re going to take your palest color and your medium light  

Palest color goes at the bottom  

Medium light goes at the top we have the white at the bottom dark at the top  

we’re just going to sew these on with a nice quarter inch seam  

I’m just going to press those both to the outside  

going to take your lightest  

the medium light and the medium dark fabric  

And on the medium light you’re going to put a medium dark Square and sew it diagonally across this way  

On the dark you’re going to put the medium light Square and sew across this way which is the same  

You have them both this way they’re going to go from lower left to upper right  

now we’re going to cut these two corners off  

then we’re going to press them  

if you wanted to save fabric if you’re making a whole bunch of these blocks again you could make this piece as half square triangles and then have this as a separate piece that’s always an option but I kind of like how nice this looked as one piece  

so we’re just going to cut off these corners  

and you can always sew here and then cut off this corner  

and save these corners  

for a little matching project that goes with this  

I do that a lot  

I’m going to press both of these towards the corner and I will be right back  

so there’s the first piece we made  

and we’re going to put the  

lighter color on this side and the darker color on this side so we’re going to match up  

medium dark shade there and the medium light shade here okay  

sew this quarter inch seam there and sew this with a nice quarter inch seam there  

again I’m just going to press that towards the outside I’ve been calling these colors wrong this is the palest color and the medium light color  

because this is the medium dark color here and then this is the darkest color  

It’s hard to keep track when you have four shades of one color plus a white it all makes sense when you’re putting it together  

now we’re going to put  

sew these ones on sew this one to the top right along there 

sew this one to the bottom right along there now I’m going to press these to the outside and 

set this piece aside for a moment and we’re going to add the corners to our last two pieces and take the darkest color and the white the white square  

and you’re going to do it the same way from the bottom left to upper right on both of these bottom left upper right nice diagonal line right there and we’re going to cut these corners off just because this is such a dark color against the white I’m going to press these  

toward the strip instead of toward the corner and I have that I’m going to put the dark strip that we just made on the left side with the dark on the bottom and the remaining one on the right side always with the white pointing away from the corner  

let’s sew that right along there  

sew this one right along there  

there is your finished block how easy was that  

and that is how you make your optical illusion Quilt Block I hope you enjoyed that if you did please hit the like button and don’t forget to subscribe to our Channel and hit that little bell if you want to be notified every time we put up a new video  

All of the measurements for the pieces you need for this block are in a free pdf you can download there’s a link right there in the description and don’t forget to check out our website at tulipsquare.com and we’ll see you next week with a brand new video and until then happy sewing