PQ 16.2 - Ombre

I was thrilled when I saw the subject of this week's challenge!  I was introduced to the concept of ombre (though it wasn't specifically called that) when I took a class taught by Karen Combs.  The class was about Optical Illusion quilts and it employed shades of colors to simulate light and shadow. I made a few blocks, but had never actually finished a quilt with the technique. 

But the class opened my eyes to the power of using shades and gradients of colors in quilting.   A few years after the class, I was a member of the Quiltmaker Magazine's initial "Scrap Addicts".  That group was charged with making scrap quilts based on Bonnie Hunter's column in that publication.  One of the quilts that I made was a queen sized log cabin made from 7 1/2 inch log cabin blocks from 1 1/2 inch strips from my stash.  I used purple blocks as an off-center focal point, then used blue, green, yellow, etc.  blocks shaded  to pinks in the corners.   It actually won a ribbon for Best Use of Color at my guild's quilt show that year.

I made Pat Sloan's Rainbow quilt during the pandemic, which also used the technique of color gradients.

So while I knew that I 'could' make another rainbow quilt for this challenge because a rainbow is after all, a gradient, I ultimately decided to go in a different direction.  Combining black and white with a 1/2 yard of teal ombre fabric that I found in my stash, I decided to make attic window blocks and set them light to dark from top to bottom and right to left. Using white on the bottom of each block and black on the sides gives the illusion of depth.

When I took a picture, I was surprised to see that another optical illusion showed up.  The teal blocks are all 2 1/2 inches finished, but they look shorter toward the bottom than they do at the top. I'm sure that there is a scientific explanation for this, but I'm running out of time to get the picture linked to the PQ 16.2 blog page, so it will have to wait!

Attic Windows
36 inches square