Quilting is an art, and all art stems from inspiration. Architecture is a great source of inspiration even for quilters. Tanya Munro of QuilTen, in Moscow, Russia, created an incredible quilt based on a building facade in Bruges, Belgium.

The Bruges Façade Screen was created to fit on an existing residential building. The project team led by Ryan Golenberg designed this around the lace that is made in the area.

You can see more of his work at http://www.iwamotoscott.com/

Map of Bruges Made of Lace – Image Source

Woman Creating Lace – Image Source

Tanyo Munro took the simple, yet stunning, pixelated version of Bruges’s complex lace, and created a foundation pieced quilt design with EQ5.

Check out more of her work at https://www.instagram.com/quil.ten/

Want to create a quilt based on architecture? Let’s work through a quilt based on a building that I really enjoy, The Guangzhou Circle.

  1. Find an image of the structure you like, with the perspective you want to capture in your quilt.
    • I used an image that showed the flat face of the building, but if I would have used an image of the side, the result would have been a completely different (but equally as beautiful!) quilt.

    • Once I had a picture, I drew a grid out of what I wanted the blocks to be.
  1. In EQ7 I created a 12 inch block with snap points every half an inch. Even though this will limit a little bit of precision, it allows for the blocks to be easier to piece.
  1. In the Tracing Image tab, I uploaded the picture of the building and cropped it down to the first block I wanted to trace.
    1. Click Stretch to Fit
      • Even though stretching the image distorts it, it makes the blocks easier to trace. It doesn’t need to be a perfect representation, it is your art after all.
  1. Next I traced all the lines that I wanted to turn into patches using the EasyDraw tools.
    • Here I decided not to create a patch for the brick work between every window, and chose to only show the window shapes.
  1. The last step for each block was to add color. I went with colors and not fabrics for this project.
  1. I followed these steps for all 5 blocks that I needed to layout the building, adding each to the Sketchbook as I finished them.
  2. The last block I needed to create was the block for the final quilt layout. For this I uploaded the image that I drew grids on at the very beginning. I traced over those grid lines to match the layout of the building as closely as I could.
  1. Once I had the quilt layout saved as a block, I went to the Quilt Worktable and Created a Quilt from Block.
  1. From here I put all my Block 1’s into row one and so on. After that, I deleted the blocks out that needed to be sky and edited a couple blocks to use as corners. The finishing steps are different for every project.

    • The final result turned out as an interesting representation of the incredible building.

Have you ever been inspired by architecture? Tell us about it!