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The Girl with a Pearl Earring Illusion, or perhaps The Girl with a Purl Earring, has been designed to be viewed from the side so is intended to be used as a wall hanging or as the centre of a bed cover.

Even though the design looks complicated the easy-to-follow chart should mean that this illusion knit can be undertaken by most knitters.

When you look straight at the illusion you only see stripes. The image is revealed as you start to move around it.

I used Stylecraft Special DK in Camel and Denim (3 balls of each plus another ball of Denim for the border). Illusions work in any thickness of yarn but using a different yarn may change the overall size.

I knit very tightly and my finished size was 83 cm by 96 cm (33” x 38”). For use as a bed cover a border could be added to bring the piece up to the desired size.

The pattern includes several versions of the chart including one for mobile devices where you can see 20 ridges at a time and are always able to see the numbers underneath.

One of the photographs here shows the piece when viewed from directly in front and some of the photos are of the mounting we used to use when displaying illusions in galleries.

Visit our World of Illusion Knitting site for more examples and tutorials.

Girl With a Pearl Earring (knitted by Woolhelmina) is now on display at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Branson, MO (June 2013)

The last image is an animation.