Lori :
I just finished a 3-D wall hanging.
Instead of squares they are diamond and
when put together with diffenent shades
of color it gives the illusion of 3 boxes
or block. this pattern is from the
book "fun with Pandoras box". Another
pattern that is similar is tumbling block
or baby block the blocks are made up of
3 diamond in light, medium and dark and
again give the illusion of depth
There are quite a number of ways to make an applique three dimensional. Ruching is one, though I sure don't know how it is done or whether I spelled it right. I saw ruched flowers on a quilt in the APNQ Quiltfest show that looked like real. There are other 3-D applique techniques as well.
There are also methods to do 3 dimensional piecing. The most popular of these would be the 3-D Bow Ties. Jackie Robinson of Animas Publishing has a book called Three Dimensional Quilt Sampler with quite a few blocks done this way.Rebecca Wat has a book called Fantastic Fabric Folding which has entirely different sorts of 3-D piecing than Jackie's. There are a few patterns that can be searched out online as well.
Finally--leastwise finally for me, is the quilting itself. The method to look up is called trapunto. In trapunto some of the areas of the quilting design are stuffed with extra batting to make them much more raised. You can get some illusion of 3-D by quilting with tighter stitching in some areas and more space in others.
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