This illusion was inspired by Andy Warhol’s screen prints of Marilyn Monroe. It uses similar unusual colour combinations but cannot precisely recreate Warhol’s style as only two colours are used in each of the ‘prints’.

The pattern includes a cushion version, which is approximately 40 cm (16”) square when worked in DK yarn, and a wall-hanging which measures approximately 80 cm (32”) square.

The cushion uses two colours and only one colour is used on each ridge of knitting. The wall-hanging uses four colours and sometimes has one colour on a ridge and sometimes two. One of the photos shows the four colours that were used. These might seem surprising when you look at the four resulting squares when you look at the wall-hanging from directly in front as in photograph three.

If you look very closely you may be able to see that yellow is in continuous stripes going down the right-hand side but it forms the background in the top quadrant and the face at the bottom. A similar thing happens with the green on the left.

The fourth photograph here is of the Marilyn Illusion completed by angelaknits from our pattern, the fifth is the cushion variation completed by speedknitter and the sixth by cstjohn.

This illusion is slightly more difficult to make than some of our others but still only requires fairly basic knitting skills.