I have spent several weeks working on this illusion. It seemed a good idea. The design was fairly straightforward but it was incredibly difficult to execute and, despite many attempts, not very successful.

People have often asked whether it is possible to see one picture from the side and another from the front. This seemed the ideal candidate with the solved and unsolved cubes.

One of the biggest problems was trying to get straight lines to define the edges of the small cubes. Missing them out completely created stepped edges, which looked even worse.

The front face of the cube works fairly well from either angle. The top and side will not lie flat enough for one colour to disappear when you view from the side.

When viewed from the side the cube seems to have rather strange proportions. When an illusion is an ‘artistic’ subject the brain seems to accept this and be able to accept it as normal, in the same way that it deals with perspective in everyday life. My brain (and probably everyone else’s) is offended by this cube that just looks wrong when I look at it from the side.

The whole piece is only 82 stitches across. I think it would work better if the whole thing was very much bigger but after so much frustration making a small one I really don’t feel inclined to try.