Cindy Grisdela ~ art quilter

Several weeks ago I was asked to make a presentation to 8th grade art classes at our local middle school. I brought in examples of my work and talked about my inspiration, design ideas and the choice to be a working artist. It was a great experience. The kids were very enthusiastic and open to the idea of fiber art. Their assignment was to create a 12″ square pillow or wall hanging using the ideas I presented. I also donated several bins of fabric to get them started. Most of the kids had little sewing experience and there were no sewing machines available, so the work had to be done by hand. One student was so excited about the project she had already come up with a drawing of her design by the time I finished talking!

Earlier this week, I went back to the classroom to witness the artists’ critique that the class does at the end of a project. Some of the compositions these students came up with were amazing! Unfortunately the pictures don’t do them justice.  While many of them struggled with the technical aspect of sewing the piece together by hand, they didn’t let those limitations diminish their use of the principles of design to create vibrant, exciting works of art. There were even a couple of boys in the classes who said they enjoyed the project so much that it was their favorite one of the year so far. It was very rewarding to be able to present quilting as an art form to this group of aspiring artists. Some of their work can be seen at the McLean Project for the Arts Youth Arts Show in McLean this month.

This is a detail of another one of my new art quilts. It’s just the top so far, but I’m having fun with this process. I like the painterly quality of using solids and the element of surprise in the improvisational piecing. These pieces seem to need hand quilting, so I’m using perle cotton to quilt circles and lines in the pieced squares. This is the largest one of these I’ve put together so far–about 30″ high x 18″ wide. I have another small square piece on the design wall, then I think I’m going to experiment with making one using larger pieces. Each piece seems to lead to another and another. What fun!

I’m really excited to announce that “Playing with Colors” has been juried into the 25th Anniversary American Quilter’s Society Show in Paducah, KY. This was the first time I entered the show and it was wonderful to get a fat envelope in the mail on Saturday.  I’ve never been to Paducah and I’m thinking about trying to go to the show now, but I’ve discovered there’s no easy way to get there from here, so we’ll have to see.

As I mentioned in an earlier post when this quilt was accepted into the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival last month, “Playing with Colors” is part of a series of art quilts exploring the use of a simple improvisational block composed of different colors across the color spectrum. The other finished quilt in the series is “Playing with Crayons,” which you can see in the large quilts gallery on my website. I have another quilt in the series in process and several more in the drafting stage.  Having “Colors” going to Paducah makes me all the more excited about expanding the series.

This is the second piece in my new art quilt series. It’s called “Splash of Yellow” and it’s an improvisational design using pieces from a grab bag of hand dyed fabrics I bought from Cherrywood Fabrics. I cut the pieces and sew them together into units, then combine the units into an interesting design. I really enjoy the idea that I don’t know what the finished piece is going to look like. The shapes and colors of the individual units determine how they will fit together best, sort of like putting together a puzzle without a picture to follow. This one has an irregular edge at the bottom and is mounted on a 9X12 artist’s canvas. I have several more of these pieces in the works and I’ll show them in process later in the week.