Cindy Grisdela ~ art quilter

I’ve been playing with this new piece for several weeks now–I think it’s going to be called Lavender Garden. I’m sharing a detail of the quilting section I finished today, because I’m so excited about it! I’d been putting off this part because I was nervous about being able to execute the idea in my brain–but today I decided to go for it. If you click on the image you’ll be able to see the stitching more clearly.

This is a great example of what I like to think of as “drawing with needle and thread.” I use a regular home sewing machine and a darning foot–there’s no marking ahead of time and no computer to do the work–it’s just me and my machine. I draw the images freehand directly onto the piece and if I’m in the proper zone, it just flows. Today was one of those good days!

I used several different colorways of variegated thread, depending on the background color, which gives an added sparkle to the overall design. This is a larger quilt–about 25″ high x 42″ wide–and it’s one of the new pieces I’m putting together for my show later this fall at the MPAartfest.  I’ve been busy the last month or so creating new work, putting together a brochure, designing postcards to send out for my shows at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden, the MPAartfest, and the Great Falls Studios Studio Tour. If you would like to be on my mailing list to receive a colorful postcard notification of these events, please fill out a contact form on my website here. I’ll only use your information to send the postcards a couple of times a year.

The green fabric is here, my son is graduated from high school and I’m ready to get back to work on this piece. I took a break from the studio for about a week while the graduation festivities went on and we had family in for the celebration, and I think that was a good thing. I have more energy to do the design work now.

Creating these pieces is intriguing for me, because it’s all about the process. There’s no pattern to follow, no instructions to guide me. I have to get with the flow of the process and let the color and design choices I make dictate what comes next. It’s exhausting sometimes and I’m full of doubts about whether I’m on the right track. But ultimately I think this is the path I want to explore right now.

I don’t have a name for this one yet and obviously it’s in the very early stage of design–the green chunks of fabric are just pinned in place and the blocks probably aren’t finished. I really like the curved piece in the central block and I think I need to repeat that shape somewhere else. I got a little stuck on this one before I took my break because I started thinking about how I would quilt it and nothing came to me. While it’s important to think about the quilting while the piece is in progress, it shouldn’t overtake the design. So I’m not going to worry about that until the piecing is finished. I also like the idea of using several different greens in the background to liven up the plain areas–the quilting will be important here. My thought was to expand on the idea I used for Amber Harvest and put three improvisational blocks in the design instead of just one. Perhaps there will be another small block in one of the lower corners as well.

The lesson learned here is important to take breaks every now and again to let the ideas percolate in my head without forcing them. Stay tuned!

Thanks to all who commented on my last post about creativity and chaos. I think the secret is to just show up in the studio and put something together, even if it’s just “therapy sewing” of random pieces. That’s what I did in the piece at right–its temporary name is Wonky Square.  For the interior, I put together random bits and pieces, some left over from other projects, until I had something I liked. Then I bordered it with black and white triangles. It didn’t seem finished, so I unearthed this great black and white fabric that looks like leafy stripes and put that on the edges. I didn’t have quite enough length for all the borders, which meant I needed to find some corner squares. I spent a very enjoyable, creative day auditioning different fabrics for this piece. It’s such a wonderful feeling when I put a piece up on the wall and it just fits. Of course there are many pieces that don’t survive the trial and error process, but that’s part of the fun and it reminds me why I love doing this so much.

I’m going to quilt this piece and show it at the Great Falls Farmers Market next Saturday. This will be a busy week getting ready for that, but I’m looking forward to it. Today’s a soft, rainy day–perfect for spending hours in the studio.

I finished this piece that was started in class last week with Ann Fahl, which I’ve tentatively decided to call “Square Dance. If you click on the image at right, you can see the quilting. I used a wild variety of quilting motifs on this, deliberately ignoring the lines of piecing. It was a fun exercise, but I really had to concentrate on what I was doing and think a couple of steps ahead as I was quilting. This is truly “drawing with my needle and thread”!

I used a shiny rayon variegated thread instead of the cotton I usually use and result was very different. The thread is more difficult to use and a little bit temperamental, so I have to decide if I want to continue to work with it so I learn its ways.

Although I have tried this technique of using lots of different motifs in one piece before, I learned a lot from doing it again in a more concentrated way. It’s a very personal style, almost like handwriting, and no two quilters will do it the same way–I might not even be able to do exactly the same thing again. One important idea I got out of this is to group the motifs so there are recognizable chunks of each design in each space, instead of changing more frequently. That’s the way it appeals to me most. I’ll definitely be working on this concept more this summer, because I think it plays to my strengths–color in the design and the quilting line. Stay tuned.

At right is “Twilight Sky,” the commission piece I just recently finished and delivered to the client.  It’s a skinny horizontal piece, about 26″h x 56″w and the couple commissioned me to make it to hang over a high narrow window in their home. This is the first time I’ve made a quilt to double as a window covering and I was interested to hear how they liked it.

I heard from them recently after the piece had hung in their home for a little while and they’re thrilled with the effect. During the day, when there’s light in the window, the piece has a stained glass feeling and at night it looks like a piece of art for the wall, they said.  I couldn’t be happier! The quilt is made from batiks, which have a very tight weave, and the light from the back shouldn’t affect the front. Although I’ve never had a problem with batiks reacting poorly to light, generally it’s a good idea to keep the front of the quilt away from direct sunlight. This picture was taken on my design wall before the piece was delivered, so it isn’t hanging in its new home, but I asked the new owners if I could share it because of the interesting story behind its creation.

Fiber art on the wall offers a unique effect that’s different from a painting or a photograph. There’s something about the dimensional, tactile quality of the art form that creates warmth and buffers sound in a room.  Contact me if you’d like to learn more about it. Obviously the window covering idea only works if you’re covering a window that you don’t mind being covered all the time, but for some windows like the one my clients have, it was the perfect solution.

I finished “Fractured Landscape” just in time to send it in for the early bird April 1 deadline for the Studio Art Quilt Associates 2010 Benefit Auction. The auction is a major fundraiser for the group, which is a non-profit organization that promotes the art quilt. The donated quilts are posted on the SAQA website until the auction begins September 20, 2010. Each piece is 12″x12″, or One Foot Square. It’s a reverse auction, with prices starting at $750 and declining each day to $550, $350, $250, $150, and $75. The auction is virtual, so it takes place entirely online and it’s a lot of fun.

This quilt is another in my Color Block series. This series explores the relationship between line and color using only solid fabrics without any other pattern. Creating these contemporary color studies is intuitive and spontaneous, which is my favorite way to work. This piece was built using purchased hand dyed solid fabrics and some odds and ends from previous projects. It’s almost like using sourdough starter–I keep scraps and odd blocks that didn’t fit into earlier projects and invariably they become the basis for something new.

If you click on the image, you should be able to see the free-motion machine quilting, which includes stylized flower shapes, pebbles, clouds, bricks and other interesting motifs.  The name suggested itself as I was quilting the piece–the curved top edge looked like a mountain and the bottom edge like a walkway, with interesting structural shapes in between.

I finished and delivered the commission piece I’ve been working on for the last couple of months–that’s a great feeling.

On the list I belong to for members of Studio Art Quilt Associates there was a thread not long ago about the power of using a sketchbook to record ideas and thoughts for times when you need inspiration. I hadn’t really thought about it much before, but while I was working on the commission, I decided to try and keep some record of ideas that I’d like to try out when I was finished.

Below are some of my sketches and at right is my first attempt at a new piece based on one of the sketches. So far, I’m really happy with the process. Before I started doing this, I would have an idea or see an image that I wanted to explore and I was sure I would remember it later, but the reality was, I usually didn’t. I was also self-conscious that my drawing wasn’t really very good. But then the light bulb went on and I realized that it doesn’t matter–all I’m doing is recording an idea for later, so when I’m ready to start on a new piece, all I have to do is look back at my sketches and decide which one to work on first.

This piece isn’t named yet, because I’ve just started it, but I’m excited with the possibilities. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’ve been working on a series of quilts that explore color and color interactions without the distraction of patterning–I call it my Color Block series. For this one I used scraps of Cherrywood handdyed fabrics I’ve been collecting. I really like the soft look the handdyed pieces have, compared to the Kona cottons I’ve used before. To create this piece, I started with the idea of a vertical strip of wonky improvisationally pieced units. I just started sewing the units together and let the fabric do the talking. It needed to have colors that were similar in value–not too many lights or darks, mostly medium values. Then I wanted to set it asymmetrically on the piece, with yellow on one side and soft orange on the other. Initially I thought the wider side would be green, but when I put it up on the wall, the green didn’t work. That’s what I mean by letting the fabric do the talking. I’m not sure about the yellow triangle near the bottom of the strip–now that I see it in a photograph, it stands out more than it does in real life, so I may have to do something different with it. That’s what I enjoy about this process–the give and take and the intuitive nature of the design–Stay tuned!

The beginnings of this piece had been up on my design wall for a couple of months patiently waiting for me to decide how to finish it. But life kept getting in the way–shows, the holidays, my son home from college, the winter doldrums–until a couple of weekends ago I found myself with about 24 hours to myself. Suddenly my creative wheels came unstuck and I was able to focus on the way forward with this.

I think the spiky blocks give it some interesting energy. I plan to hand quilt it with a heavy perle cotton thread. It doesn’t have a name yet–sometimes the right name just comes to me as I’m quilting a piece, so we’ll see about this one.

I’ve got several different projects going on right now–this piece is ready for quilting, a have a commission piece that’s ready for quilting and my scrap quilt for Melody’s challenge is up on the wall. There are fabrics and scraps covering nearly every surface of my studio. I think I need to have a straighten up session so I can think more clearly!

These are my first attempts at the QAWM project – better known as Quilt Along With Melody. At the beginning of the week, Melody issued a challenge on her blog to make simple blocks during February to use up fabric you had laying around. These are novelty prints that I’ve had for a while, but I’m using more batiks and hand-dyed fabrics now, so it seemed like a good idea to use them for something.

I’ve learned something about myself with this project. It’s hard for me to cut up fabric and make blocks without knowing what they’re going to be!

The first two blocks I made were two variations on the pink, green and multi-polka dot blocks. I liked them so much I cut them up and put them into a setting that I think will end up being a pillow. I used up a little bit of fabric on those, but making them into something right away wasn’t the point. So I went back and just started making blocks willy-nilly. And it was hard! I kept thinking about what they wanted to BE. I think this is a good exercise for me to help me loosen up my need to control my designs.

I’m not really happy with the 9 large blocks-they seem too disjointed and well–large. So I’m going to make some more blocks and maybe cut them into smaller blocks like I did with the first set to see if smaller blocks are more appealing to me. Maybe there’s a reason I don’t use these fabrics much any more! I view this project as something to have fun with, not necessarily to come up with a finished product.

Anyway–thanks Melody for the challenge! Click on the link above to read more about the project and see Melody’s progress.

Melody Johnson has challenged readers of her blog to a great stash busting project. Use a simple block she designed to make as many blocks as you can during the month of February with only fabrics on hand in your baskets, in my case.  I chose to use these bright novelty fabrics that I’ve been collecting for years. I used them to make quilts for the babies and children in my life–but time marches on and those babies and children are just about grown up now. So this sounds like a fun way to make something out of these fabrics and free up some basket space in the process for new fabrics. Thanks Melody! Click on the link above to visit her blog and read more about the project.