Casey York - Modern Appliqué Illusions: 12 Quilts Create Perspective & Depth

Publisher: Amy Marson

Creative Director: Gailen Runge

Art Director: Kristy Zacharias

Editors: S. Michele Fry and Karla Menaugh

Technical Editors: Alison M. Schmidt and Nanette S. Zeller

Cover/Book Designer: April Mostek

Production Coordinator: Rue Flaherty

Production Editor: Joanna Burgarino

Illustrator: Kirstie L. Petterson

Photo Assistant: Mary Peyton Peppo

Styled photography by Nissa Brehmer and instructional photography by Diane Pedersen, unless otherwise noted

DEDICATION

In loving memory of my grandmother, Margaret Gardonio, for her tireless support and boundless enthusiasm, and for always knowing how to motivate me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been a truly collaborative experience, and many people contributed to bringing it to press. I owe deep thanks to everyone who has participated in the writing and publishing process, as well as to you, my readers. I would like to address special gratitude to the following individuals and companies.

First, many, many thanks to the wonderful editors I have worked with at Stash Books and C&T Publishing. To my developmental editors, Michele Fry and Karla Menaugh, I feel so lucky to have had your guidance and support throughout the development of my manuscript. My technical editor, Alison Schmidt, made sure my instructions were clear and my measurements accurate, ensuring that all of the projects described here would be fun and straightforward to make. My other team members, April Mostek, Nissa Brehmer, Diane Pedersen, Mary Peyton Peppo, Rue Flaherty, Kirstie Petterson, and Joanna Burgarino, translated my scatterbrained design ideas into the beautiful book you hold in your hands, with which I couldnt be happier. To Roxane Cerda and Amy Marson, thank you so much for taking a chance on me and my work, and for your helpful suggestions and encouraging enthusiasm.

I also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the companies that generously contributed materials to the making of this book and its projects. In no particular order, they include Michael Miller Fabrics, Westminster Fibers/FreeSpirit Fabrics, Spoonflower, The Warm Company, Pellon, Aurifil, and Darice. It has been fantastic working with all of you, and it is my pleasure to recommend your products to my readers.

A huge thank-you goes to Allison Rosen for working with me to chronicle my writing experience online, as well as for her behind-the-scenes advice. Many thanks also to the Stash Books staff and editors who participated in our blogging project.

Many thanks are due my quilters, Angela Walters and Ann McNew, for their beautiful work on several of the quilts in this book. I am in awe of their skill and artistry, and I am so proud to have some of their work represented among the projects here. Thank you also to the staff of Merrily We Sew Along for assisting and encouraging me in my own adventures in longarm quilting. Thank you to Jane, Jenny, and Laurie of Janie Lou for putting up with my incessant visits to their shop and offering sound design advice. Finally, my friends and family have been instrumental in helping me bring the idea of writing a book to fruition. To my husband, Barrett, and our two sons, Julian and Simon, thank you so much for your love, support, and patience during the crazy periods of manuscript preparation. Thank you also to my dad, sisters, and grandma, as well as all of my parents- and siblings-in-law for believing in and encouraging me, and for listening to me prattle on about the writing process. Enduring thanks to my mother for teaching me to sew and instilling a lifelong love of creating. And last but not least, many thanks to the amazing members of the St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild, whose support and encouragement first sparked my interest in writing a book on modern crafting.

INTRODUCTION

Perspective is a way of thinking about observation, a method that harnesses and organizes space. It is a fundamentally practical technique: given two dimensions, it computes the third and, conversely, permits three dimensions to be projected onto two.

Pierre Descargues, Perspective, 1976

Ever since childhood, Ive been fascinated with illusionistic representation. More specifically, Ive always been curious about the sleight of hand that allows artists to trick us into seeing three-dimensional space when were looking at a two-dimensional surface. My first lesson in this trickery was when I was six years old and my dadusing only overlapping lines and strategically placed shadowstaught me to draw ribbons that appeared to curl up off the paper. Fascinated by this newfound skill, I naturally wrote up a how-to-draw book and tried to get my dad to market it to his co-workers. Fast forward to late 2012, when I was inspired by a Modern Quilt Guild fabric challenge and a seventeenth-century painting by Meindert HobbemaThe Avenue at Middelharnisto try to introduce the illusion of depth into a quilt. The result was Onwards, a quilt that retains a sense of minimalism while still strongly suggesting a three-dimensional space. I knew the experiment was successful when my two sons responded by trying to walk into the quilted perspective. Onwards eventually gave rise to the concept for this book, where Ive had the remarkable opportunity to explore more fully the concept of using illusionistic representation in the two-dimensional medium of quilting.

The illusion of depth has been a hallmark of Western art since the times of the ancient Greeks and Romanswe humans have always been interested in fooling the eye into believing that flat surfaces are anything but. The story of the ancient Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius illustrates this trait. According to Pliny the Elder, Zeuxis and Parrhasius held a contest to see who could create the most convincing illusionistic painting. Zeuxis thought he had won when the grapes he had painted tempted even the birds. However, when he tried to pull back the curtain covering Parrhasius painting, he realized that it also was painted. Thus, Zeuxis had to grant Parrhasius the victory because the latters painting had fooled not merely the birds but also a fellow artist.

ONWARDS, 49 51, made and quilted by Casey York, 2012

While they do not attempt to depict the real world in such detail, the quilted projects in this book also achieve the illusion of depth. Most of them do so through a technique called linear perspective, which I use often. Im not alone in using linear perspective. It was invented during the Italian Renaissance and has been used ever since as a way of constructing the illusion of space. Even sculptors and garden designers, whose work actually exists in three dimensions, have used linear perspective to infuse their work with meaning. Entire books have been written about the history of linear perspective and how it works to fool the eye. Ive listed a few in . However, for our purposes, a simple explanation is sufficient.

In linear perspective, parallel lines appear to converge as they recede in space. Theoretically, such lines will eventually meet at a point known as the vanishing point, which corresponds to the center of the viewers field of vision. This technique is known as one-point perspective, and it is used in Onwards and many of the quilts in this book. A variation, two-point perspective (which usesyou guessed ittwo vanishing points), allows oblique views of objects and can be seen in .

Another characteristic of perspective is that objects seem to get smaller as they get farther away. At the same time, the ground plane appears to rise to meet the horizon line as the horizon recedes. Accordingly, we can give the impression of three dimensions by placing progressively smaller forms at points progressively closer to the center of the quilt, as in .