Faces of Gaudi

Lisa Walton July 28, 2021 Faces,Lisa Walton,Musings,Revealed Quilts

I have always been a fan of Spanish architect Anton Gaudi. I love his organic shapes and colours and always feel inspired whenever I see his work. I have been fortunate enough to visit Barcelona a few times and admit that Casa Battlo is possibly my favourite building in the world. So with the Cloth in Common prompt of Faces I immediately thought of the facade of this building. some parts of it actually look like faces with eyes and smiling mouths.

I played around with this image from one of my visits in a few photo apps and settled on this image created in VectorQ (previously called Imaengine)

Using Photoshop Elements I broke it down into layers so I could separate the black shapes and I painted a set of fabrics in shades of blues and greens and fused the back of them to Mistyfuse.

I then had the coloured version, a black & white version and just the black shape layer printed out to full size at my local copy shop.

I was planning to do a collage of the blues and greens and then trace and cutout all the black shapes individually and fuse them on top but quickly realised this was definitely out of the realms of possibility and sanity. I then remembered my Silhouette Cameo Digital cutter which I have had for a while but never really mastered it so thought it might be possible to do this by cutting out the shapes. So I persevered using painted Pellon 830 non woven interfacing. After a lot of trial and error I think I finally mastered the software and the settings required enough to get clean cuts. I had to do it in sections as the finished image was about 30″ x 40″ (90cm x 120cm).

There were hundreds of tiny tiny pieces which were definitely a challenge to find where to put them but I had my reference prints .

While these shapes were cutting I created the background collage and then started adding the cutout shapes

Once it was all fused together the quilting started. I quilted this on my Bernina Q20. Starting on the background and finally outlined all the black shapes. So many stops and starts.

Finally after burying seemingly hundreds of threads it was finished

Faces of Gaudi
Size – 31″ x 40″
Hand painted fabric raw edge appliqué
Free Motion quilting

17 thoughts on “Faces of Gaudi”

  2. Thanks for showing the details of your process. The piece is wonderful. You must have infinite patience! We went to Barcelona not long before COVID and so loved the buildings and I think that Casa Battlo was one of my favourites too.

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  3. Oh my goodness! This is as over the top as Gaudi himself! The last time I visited Barcelona in 2015 his cathedral was still being constructed. If this was my quilt, I’d still be constructing it for a long time! Great job, Lisa.

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  4. You have achieved! This is so impressive… The detail, colors, organic curved… What a great idea to quilt this building image!

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  5. Lisa, I am thrilled to see what you have accomplished! You inspire me! It took plenty of effort and you persevered.
    I remember when you ordered the Pellon 830 from outside of Australia.
    Anton Guadi is also a favorite of mine. You’ve created a fabulous piece of art. Thank you for your complete description of your methods and of the software that you used. You are very helpful to us all at The Cutting Edge!
    Marion

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  7. Wow, that’s a lot of really tiny pieces! You definitely pulled it off, I love your colour scheme and the interplay between light and dark in the piece.

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  8. I loved my visit to Barcelona and so fascinated by the architecture I saw there. Having a similar photo makes me appreciate what you have created even more. Thank you for sharing your thought process as well as all the work to create your art.

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  10. Lisa, your artwork here is amazing – the use of the Silhouette, the many hours of planning, trial and success, and the stitching – just dynamic. I will be setting aside time to study about Gaudi…

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