In an earlier post , I described a floor tile pattern I discovered at my

local laundromat.  I thought the design would make a great cane, and took
a photograph of it for future reference.  One of my readers mentioned that the pattern resembled a quilt block known as ‘Card Trick’.  Although

I am a big fan of quilts and quilt patterns, I had never heard of this one. 

      Quilt patterns are a wonderful source of inspiration for cane designs.  Judith Skinner’s video, Precision Caning, demonstrates how to build a beautifully shaded ‘log cabin quilt cane’.  Judy Belcher’s DVD, Millefiore Story, also features step by step instructions for building a quilt block cane, and cutting and reassembling it to make different variations.  Jennifer Patterson’s website Quilted in Clay is loaded with information, tools, and products related to clay quilting, as well as marvelous quilt patterened jewelry.  She sells a ‘Clay Disc Set and Adapter Ring’  for extruding shapes used in building a quilt cane with the standard Kemper and Sculpey Clay Guns.  It is a wonderful set (I have one, of course!), but to be honest, I do not use clay extruders very much because I am too lazy to load the things and clean them out between colors !  I have no experience with the PCE extruders, which are larger in size and have a huge array of dies, but they are certainly worth checking out !  The advantage of the using an extruder, of course, is that you get perfectly uniform and precise shapes that would be extremely difficult to achieve using a roller and blade.  

  

      Well, that’s enough of the introduction and background information….Let us proceed to the Laundromat-uh, Card Trick-cane.  You will notice that I have changed the orientation of the ‘cards’ from the original quilt pattern.  I did this because I would have had to use a lot more of the ‘background’ clay at the corners.  I used about 3 ounces/85 g of clay for each of the pattern colors, and about 9 ounces/255g for the background color, but I never measure so these are rough estimates.  The point is that you want to make sure you have PLENTY of the background color !

This time I am using black, white, and 2 shades of gray as my color palette.

I use my square cutter to make squares which will be stacked and trimmed to make a log.

The squares are stacked and trimmed. This stack will be cut into quarters, and stacked again.

This is how the stacked ‘quarters’ look before trimming the sides.

The stack is trimmed to make a log about 3″ long and 3/4″ square.

This process is repeated to make square logs for each color, making a total of 4.

Each log is cut into thirds and arranged to make this shape.

Each shape is outlined with a very thin sheet of white and black. Note that the ‘notch’ part is not outlined!!

The shapes are arranged to form the card trick pattern. Now you can see why the ‘notches’ are not outlined !

I made a log with Fimo Stone clay, and cut it to fill in the 4 ‘open corners’ to form a square.

I then outlined the square with 2 sheets (thickest setting on my pasta machine) of the stone clay to surround the design.

Here’s a slice of the ‘base cane’ before reduction.

I reduced the base cane to a 1″ square (left), then cut a piece off and reduced that to about 5/8″ (right).

I cut the smaller square cane into 4 pieces and arrange them this way.

I then reduce this pattern for my first card trick variation.

Here’s another arrangement with the white portion in the center.

Now I take a piece of the large base cane and cut it in half from corner to corner.

I then cut each triangle half in half again (not shown!), and arrange the 4 pieces like this to make yet another variation.

I don’t quite remember how I made the cane in the middle (!!), but the one at the far right was made from 4 slices of it. Just experimenting and having fun..

I end up with the usual assortment of canes, cane slices, and scraps..

    

 

 

 

 

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