Venetian Gothic - Quilt Fabric Collection

Intro

The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is inspired by palazzi in Venice. For these designs, I pulled ideas from early gothic styles and ideas (15th and 16th centuries). Many palazzi have been renovated multiple times over the centuries, and today, are a mix of architectural styles.

I used the same color palette as the two previous collections. So “A Forgotten Italian Villa” collection & “The Dragon of Hannon” collection, and this collection can be mixed & matched nicely, if desired.

When creating art using software (apps), you have every color available. By selecting a limited (12 colors?) palette, and mixing other colors, I find that my designs go together color-wise better. It does imitate traditional painting, which I kind of like. It gives me a structure and some limits - I do better when I have some limits.

All the designs in this collection are available at my Spoonflower shop. The large size is 18” repeat on fabric and 24” repeat on wallpaper. I will also offer selected designs at a small scale - 6” repeat on both fabric and wallpaper - perfectly scaled for dollhouses, and also of interest to quilters.

And if you have been fruitlessly searching for a fabric with gondolas, your wish has come true!

The Quilt Fabric Designs

This first design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is Istrian Stone - which was used to build on top of the wood piles - and directly support the houses. It was also used for decorative portions of the facades.

Since Istrian stone is basically white, I tried to add some color to it - yet still look white. I’ve been haunting books of John Singer Sargent’s watercolor paintings. He did a marvelous job of adding color to white or tan architectural elements.

Istrian Stone design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both fabric and wallpaper - perfect for quilting or making dollhouses.

The second design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is bottle (or crown) glass. Very common in Venetian buildings. Venice is world-renowned for its glass - bottle glass, white lead glass, crystal glasses, and chandeliers. All Venetian glass was manufactured on the island of Murano just north of Venice proper. Glass of various sorts and qualities was readily available to Venetians and as a result, even commoners had glass windows in their modest homes.

This is an all-over design of bottle glass with some color variation. The challenge here is to get a “glass” look - which I think this one turned out pretty good. I put the Silk Wall Covering design behind the glass. It shows through here and there, and sets off the colors that I put in the glass itself. I really like exploring blending colors this way. It also seems to help the “glass” look like glass, and not some solid object.

Bottle Glass design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both fabric and wallpaper - perfect for quilting or making dollhouses.

This third design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is inspired by the lacy, delicately carved Istrian stone found on the facades of the elegant palazzi. It was critically important to reduce the weight of the buildings constructed in the muddy Venetian lagoon, so large areas of glass and lacy carved stone (with lots of openings) were one way of achieving this goal.

Here I took an iconic stone shape found on Gothic facades of many Venetian palazzi - and turned it into a overall fabric design. Good for when you want a Venetian Gothic stone carved look for your quilt, that simply repeats.

Carved Stone design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric at 18 inch repeat and on wallpaper at 24 inch repeat, which is perfect for dollhouses at 1:12 scale.

The fourth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is a art panel of the front of a palazzo. The lacy carved Istrian stone facade and balcony with bottle glass windows behind. Many palazzi were built in the 16th century in the Gothic style imported from the East. These same palazzi have had interior renovations to keep up with changing styles - such as Rococo - but the exteriors were not changed. You can read history books about Venetian palazzi - which show the drawings of the exterior design for construction - and look for the building on Google Maps - and voila! - there it is - exterior looking just like the old original sketch.

I was a little concerned about making the stone design for this. The Substance Design program does very geometric and patterned things extremely easily - but to do the onion arch shape, it not so easy. And where the round stone part curves into the lower arches, didn’t quite fit. But I think it is a small thing and looks lovely nonetheless. The idea certainly comes through.

This was my first attempt at Corinthian capitals on columns also. Again, not very detailed or perfect, but they get the idea across. And how detailed and perfect doe sit have to be? This is intended as creative art - and not a photo.

Front of Palazzo design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric at 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper at 24 inch repeat, which is perfect for dollhouses at 1:12 scale. Also nice as a hero or art panel in a quilt. Please keep in mind that if you purchase on wallpaper, you need at least 2 ft of wallpaper. The “sample” size is only 1 ft of length and you will only get half the picture (vertically).

The fifth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is old-fashioned elegant Venetian silk fabric for the walls of the main living room (soggiorno or portego) at the piano nobile level (one story above ground). This is the main room of the palazzo and would be the fanciest. It was used for dining and entertaining the guests.

I made three different versions of this before I settled on something that I like. The gold pattern is re-used and re-arranged wisteria blossoms. I wanted a pattern and colors that said “elegant” but not screaming at you. I also wanted some context of it being old, but not dirty or grungy.

Silk Wall Covering design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both fabric and wallpaper - perfect for quilting or making dollhouses.

The sixth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is ceiling beams - you know, like you are looking up at the ceiling. The Venetians used hefty wooden beams set very close together. I assume they did this to ensure sufficient strength to support the weight of the floors - many times floors were stone, marble, or terrazzo. Terrazzo being the lightest weight and the most flexible floor surface. Venetian buildings needed to be able to flex a little as they were sitting on wood piles driven deep into the muddy lagoon. In the important rooms, the underside of the beams are carved and painted to be very decorative.

This is a design that I have wanted to make since I started learning to use Substance Designer. I have really struggled to understand how to set heights and make things really look like there is depth between different things - in this case - the bottom of the beams and the flat ceiling/floor that the beams support. I have slowly gained understanding using the software and also gained skill at controlling the heights of different parts of the design. The carving on the underside of the beams is delicate.

Ceiling Beams design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both fabric and wallpaper. The ceiling beams should be about 6” wide - so the 18 inch repeat on fabric is closest to dollhouse scale, but the 24 inch repeat on wallpaper should work ok, just a bit large.

The seventh design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is an all-over design with chandeliers on the silk wall covering. This is my first attempt at ciocche or murano chandeliers; these are inspired by the ciocche style which have flowers and leaves. These are inspired by the Murano chandeliers found in the fancy main living & dining room of a Venetian palazzo.

Since this was my first attempt at chandeliers, I opted to keep it simple and focus on achieving a general shape and feel that evoked “chandelier”. I think I accomplished that.

Chandeliers design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric at 18 inch repeat and on wallpaper at 24 inch repeat.

The eighth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is an art panel of the soggiorno or portego (in reading books, I see both words for the same space) - which would be the main living & dining room space at the piano nobile level (up one story from the ground floor) of a Venetian palazzo. So here you are looking at the inside of the front wall of the palazzo. You see the big window and the shadow of the carved stone outside it. Because Venice had a government with a court system to settle disputes (instead of using violence), Venetians could have large delicate windows. They did not need to build fortresses to live safely.

Here again, I am working on refining and improving my skill at making architectural details. I keep finding easier and faster ways to create architectural details. When I started learning this software, I had never really thought about using patterns to create shapes and images. As I keep making these designs, my mind is working out the patterns and ways to create these patterns. I am also still exploring just how much detail a design can hold - and still look good printed on fabric.

Front Interior of Palazzo design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric at 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper at 24 inch repeat, which is perfect for dollhouses at 1:12 scale. Also nice as a hero or art panel in a quilt. Please keep in mind that if you purchase on wallpaper, you need at least 2 ft of wallpaper. The “sample” size is only 1 ft of length and you will only get half the picture (vertically).

The ninth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is marble. No particular marble. Some palazzi have marble and some have stucco painted to look like marble. I chose a green color as the water in the canals is green.

Designing marble is a struggle for me. I’m not much of an abstract art person. But I think this is a skill I need to develop. So I played around with this and played around some more. And ta-da here we are. I have not yet decided if I like it or not.

Aqua Marble design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both fabric and wallpaper - perfect for quilting or making dollhouses.

The tenth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is a typical marble tile floor. Ground floor rooms (piano terreno) required finishes that can withstand wet and dirty conditions. Typically these rooms had floors of stone or marble. I chose the very popular orange and cream checkerboard style. The ground floor rooms were mainly used to store the merchandise that the family’s shipping company was transporting in & out of Venice.

I opted for an old floor in reasonable condition, yet showing show age and wear. It is hard to decide how much dirt and damage to put on a design. The software is designed to facilitate this, but many times I don’t bother. I like a nice clean look to the designs that I make. I also find that “dirt” on the design, really looks like real dirt on the printed fabric. So I tread carefully here.

Diamond Marble Floor design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both fabric and wallpaper - perfect for quilting or making dollhouses.

The eleventh design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is a view out a clear glass window to the cortile - or inner courtyard. The Venetians developed a unique clear glass during the Renaissance era.

The challenge of illustrating glass - especially clear glass - is “see” something that is clear & invisible. I put some translucent white on the glass. Making the courtyard background lighter. The other challenge of illustrating glass - what to see through (or beyond it). Here I used the court art panel (the last design in this collection).

Old Clear Glass design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric at 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper at 24 inch repeat, which is perfect for dollhouses at 1:12 scale.

The twelfth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is another art panel or scene. This would be an interior wall of a room at the ground level or a mezzanine level a little above ground. This is part of the house that is less fancy and has access to the private interior courtyard - cortile. The well would be there, and access to the kitchen and spaces were the servants worked.

I went for somewhat fancy. The windows have the traditional clear glass windows - the glass pieces held together with lead, and a wood frame.

For the previous two fabric collections (A Forgotten Italian Villa and the Dragon of Hannon), I made scenes like this - which front and middle and rear distance surfaces separately and rendered them in Photoshop - and then put them into the rear of the surfaces in front. I did this here, but decided I didn’t like it as it shifts the colors toward yellow - or as in this case, my aqua colors turned very green. So I re-did them in the 3D software entirely, trying out some setting changes regarding the height settings, and got them to work as I wanted. There is a little tweaking and fine-tuning to balance the height for near vs distant surfaces, which I am still exploring (or struggling) to get right.

Interior Court design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric at 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper at 24 inch repeat, which is perfect for dollhouses at 1:12 scale. Also nice as a hero or art panel in a quilt. Please keep in mind that if you purchase on wallpaper, you need at least 2 ft of wallpaper. The “sample” size is only 1 ft of length and you will only get half the picture (vertically).

The thirteenth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is old stucco. Stucco was commonly used to cover brick walls. And it notoriously cracks and falls off at the lower levels of the buildings due to the canal water. The buildings in Venice also have more movement to them as the muddy ground is not solid. So the materials used for construction and finishes, need to be able to move with the building. Stucco apparently, is a bit brittle. There is also a lot of salt in the lagoon air, which contributes to damaging the buildings. There is a constant need for repair, resulting in Venice having a look of elegant decay.

The software I use to create these designs, has lot of “noise” patterns that are intended for making dirt. These work nicely for making stucco. This stucco is old and dirty. I put a few colors into this - inspired by looking at lots of watercolor paintings - and how painters used colors where one might actually have seen only one color. I think this adds interest to the design.

Old Stucco design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both fabric and wallpaper - perfect for quilting or making dollhouses.

The fourteenth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is rough bricks. Bricks were the main building blocks of the Venetian buildings. Bricks are lighter weight than stone —— except of course, when you replace it with stone that holes carved out of it. The bricks were typically covered with stucco. Sometimes thin stone veneer. The salty air and movement of the buildings, resulted in the stucco cracking and falling off.

I tried to make my bricks a little rounded. And a little uneven. From looking at photos in books and on Google Street View, there is considerable variety in the bricks. And many walls have patches of various bricks mixed together. Each time I make a brick design, my bricks get a a little more realistic looking.

Rough Bricks design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both cotton quilting fabric and wallpaper - perfect for quilting or making dollhouses.

The fifteenth design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection is cute gondolas (gondole, plural in Italian). I really struggled with what color to make them. Gondolas are black - but I didn’t want to make them black. I really wanted more color - yet still look “black”. I explored purples and blues. I perused watercolor paintings by Sargent and his use of blues and browns to stand in for black. I ended up with a very dark blue.

Gondolas had a cover for privacy over the passenger seating area back in the old days. Wealthy folks preferred to have privacy, unlike today’s tourists who want to see the city.

I did a bit of research before making my gondola. I watched a bunch of youtube videos, mostly in Italian, of old men sharing their knowledge about designing, building, and driving(?) gondolas. Some videos had translations, and some had subtitles, and others I was left to let the Italian words roll around in my head. But I learned a new word - forcola (forcole, pl) which refers to the carved, shaped, piece of wood that the oarsman uses to control the oar movement, and make the gondola go forward, or turn left, or right, etc. And learning to drive a gondola is a real time-consuming skill - that you can spend a lifetime continuing to learn and improve and hone. And the end result, being, making you boat go forward. This feels like a perfect metaphor for my art. The hours spent learning a piece of software and improving at using it. The time spent learning about art - colors, composition, etc - all to move toward my goal and creating inspiring and fun art.

Gondolas design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric with 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper with 24 inch repeat. It is also available in small size with 6 inch repeat on both cotton quilting fabric and wallpaper for cute quilting goodness.

And sixteenth and final design of the Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collection, is the cortile - or inner courtyard - of an old Venetian palazzo. This is where the well would be if the family had enough land and money. It is also a parking spot for your gondola, in a pinch. Some palazzi had “boat houses” for their gondolas (gondole, pl. It.).

This design was intended to have wisteria vines with flowers. This was my second attempt at making wisteria flowers, and it certainly went better than my first attempt. Ultimately, I ditched it as the blooms turn gray when lit using the material rendering plugin in Photoshop. The blooms, since the face down, get shadow on them, which causes the gray. I have not concluded how I want to offset this effect. The blossoms also looked a little cartoony, and I felt that they didn’t fit in with the scene as a result. So I ditched them. They are memorialized in the silk wall covering design.

Exterior Court design with coordinating fabrics. The Venetian Gothic quilt fabric collections features designs inspired by 16th century Gothic architecture in Venice. Available at my Spoonflower shop on cotton quilting fabric at 18 inch repeat, and on wallpaper at 24 inch repeat, which is perfect for dollhouses at 1:12 scale. Also nice as a hero or art panel panel in a quilt. Please keep in mind that if you purchase on wallpaper, you need at least 2 ft of wallpaper. The “sample” size is only 1 ft of length and you will only get half the picture (vertically).

Outro

I hope these designs inspire the old world 16th century Gothic elegance of Venice. I hope to continue improving my skills and do some 18th century Rococo designs eventually. “A Forgotten Italian Villa” fabric collection and this collection, are close together both in time and geography, and they used the same color palette, so they can be mixed and matched.

Click to see entire collection at my Spoonflower shop.

Click here for the A Forgotten Italian Villa quilt fabric collection, also at my Spoonflower shop.