Cindy Grisdela ~ art quilter

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.

I’m pleased to announce that “Time Travel” has been accepted into the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival to be held February 25-28, 2010 in Hampton, VA. This is the fourth year in a row my work has been accepted there.

I have a soft spot in my heart for this show. It used to be held in Williamsburg, where I went to college, and it was the first big quilt show I ever attended, probably about 15 or 16 years ago. It was moved from Williamsburg to the convention center in Hampton several years ago.

Time Travel is part of my Color Block series, which explores the graphic potential of solid color fabrics put together with improvisational piecing techniques. This quilt grew out of the previous quilt in the series, Regatta.  After I squared up the blocks for that quilt, I had these wonderful strips of fabric left over and I couldn’t bear to throw them away. I pieced them into wonky rectangular blocks using different color solid fabrics and alternated them with wonky log cabins. The strips go in different directions and add a lot of movement and activity to the quilt. It was fun to piece and then I handquilted concentric circles all over the top with a large needle and perle cotton. I didn’t really know how it would end up when I started it and that’s my favorite way to work.

Summer Breeze 33" x 27"

I just received notice recently that “Summer Breeze” was accepted into the “Creative Threads: From Fiber to Fine Art” Textile Exhibit at Glen Echo Park near Bethesda, MD. The exhibit will run from January 23 to February 28 in the Popcorn Gallery at the park, which is open on weekends. It should be an interesting show.

Summer Breeze is part of the series that happened when I wasn’t looking. I’ve decided to call it my “Windows” series, because that was the name of the first piece. These pieces are constructed with small improvisationally pieced compositions that are arranged into an interesting design like puzzle pieces, usually with a solid or mottled background to set off the blocks. It’s one of my favorite ways to work and the series has been popular, since three of the five pieces have been sold.  The other one that I still have is “Color My World,” which I wrote about on the blog about a week ago. Summer Breeze is set onto a reddish-pink background and mounted on stretcher bars so it hangs on the wall like a picture.

Glen Echo is a fascinating place. It used to be an amusement park and many of the buildings from that phase are still there. They have wonderful puppet shows and a magical merry-go-round where I used to take my boys when they were young, in addition to artist studios, theater performances, and classes in art and dance. It’s also a national park and there are opportunities to learn about the unique history of the place. If you have the opportunity to visit, it’s well worth the trip, especially if you have children to accompany you.

Sometimes when I feel like I’m stuck without inspiration, I do what I like to think of as therapy sewing. I just start cutting fabric and sewing it back together–or I play with my scraps, sewing them into small compositions. It often helps me get back on track. Sometimes these excursions turn into something fun, like the pillows at right. I just started out cutting and sewing wonky log cabin squares and they turned into these happy pillows.

These pillows, plus two others, are available for sale at The Artisans shop in McLean at the Langley Shopping Center, 1368 Chain Bridge Road. It’s a fun shop with lots of great handcrafted items for gifts or a treat for yourself!

Color My World 27" x 20"

You might recognize this piece from an earlier post. In November I was playing with making small compositions and turning them into coasters when I suddenly these blocks leapt onto the design wall and demanded to be turned into a quilt! I’ve used this technique several times, so I guess it’s turned into a new series while I wasn’t looking–I’ll have to decide what to call it. This is the fifth piece in the series.

Color My World is mounted on stretcher bars with a dark purple background. I had fun piecing the blocks out of scraps left over from other projects–each one is individual. I liked the blue batik I used for the block backgrounds because it reminded me of the water on the globe.

Color My World detail

I decided I wanted to try some different quilting motifs on this piece because I had made the little block compositions that draw the viewer in for a closer look. There are wild suns and spiky spirals and smooth spirals with stippling around them if you look closely!

One of my goals for the year is to spend more time mixing quilting motifs in my quilts. I read an analysis somewhere that good art can be appreciated on at least two levels. It’s interesting from far away and gives the viewer a reward for looking at it closeup as well. So it’s important to focus on composition, color, balance in the larger picture and add interesting details for more intimate viewing.

Jazz Rhythms 56"h x 35"w

“Jazz Rhythms” is finally complete and photographed and up on the website. It’s the latest in my Color Block series of quilts that use mostly solid fabrics and improvisational piecing.

This has been a work in progress for some time, because I ended up reworking it once before it was quilted and once afterwards–reworking a quilt after it’s been quilted is not something I’d recommend, but in this case I’m glad I did it. Last fall I thought I was finished with it and I had the opportunity to have it professionally critiqued.  The group thought it should be vertical rather than horizontal and that it should have more of the wonky stripe sections on the outside edges. I thought their ideas had merit, so I turned it on its side and “unstitched” some of the sections on the outside so I could  add more wonky stripes. Then I restitched it. This was easier than it sounds because I was handquilting the piece with big stitches and perle cotton. There are red concentric circles quilted all over the top.

The great thing about this series is every time I finish one piece I have ideas for several more. I’d like to do something like this again but have the interior sections more controlled and play more with the wonky stripes. Stay tuned.

Cosmos (detail)

I’ve been spending a good bit of time the last several days thinking about the new year and what I want to accomplish in 2010. I’m not big on resolutions, but I’ve been intrigued by blogs by Lisa Call and others that talk about choosing a word for the year (www.blog.lisacall.com). So I’ve decided that my word for 2010 will be Expand. I want to expand my work beyond my comfort zone, I want to grow as an artist and try new things. And I want to have fun with the possibilities.

I started on this path to some extent in 2009, when I was accepted as a member of the Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery www.potomaccraftsmengallery.com and gained a new venue to show my work.

At right is a detail of “Cosmos,” one of my newer pieces and the latest in my Playing with Colors series. It’s an example of my new quilting strategy to make my quilting designs more complex and interesting. If you look closely you can see two or three different design motifs in the pattern of the thread. I deliberately chose to do this on a fairly busy piece so if I wasn’t happy with the result the quilt wouldn’t be ruined. But I am happy with it and I wish it showed up better! I tried this idea on my next piece, “Color My World,” which I just had photographed today and can’t wait to show you because you can see the detail much more clearly. It’s more challenging to quilt this way, because I add the quilting designs myself on my home sewing machine–there’s no computer involved! But in the end it’s more interesting to work on and to look at. I want to Expand and do more of this kind of work in 2010.

Happy New Year!