Cindy Grisdela ~ art quilter

I’ll be displaying my work at the Great Falls Studios booth at the Great Falls Farmer’s Market in the Village Center tomorrow, Saturday May 29, from 9 AM – 1 PM. I’ll have several new pieces that I haven’t shown here before, including “Impressions of Paynes Prairie,” at right. In addition, I’ll have other contemporary quilted wall art, colorful pillows and journal covers, and note cards for sale.

I created “Impressions” specifically for a show in my hometown, Gainesville, Florida, that ran earlier this year. The theme was quilts depicting natural Florida, so I created this impressionistic landscape of a local hiking area near where I grew up. If you click on the image, you’ll be able to see the dense free form quilting in this piece, including stylized flowers, pebbles, cloud formations, walkways and waves. I had a lot of fun drawing with my needle and thread on this piece.

If you’re in the Great Falls area tomorrow, stop by and say hello–I’d love to see you!

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 got the photos back from my photography session last week and I’ll be sharing the images and posting them to my website this week. I’m having a little trouble coming up with a name for the quilt at right, which is unusual for me. It’s pieced from purchased hand dyed fabric and hand quilted with perle cotton. I really enjoyed the process of making this one–somehow the asymmetrical spikes really speak to me and I like the idea of having the curved borders on only two sides. I can see that I’d like to revisit this concept and see what else I can do with it. I’m not sure if this piece is part of my Color Block series or an entirely new one, so we’ll see where it goes.

Which brings me to thoughts on creativity and chaos. I’m not by nature neat when I’m working on a project, so my studio often looks like a tornado hit it when I’m working. I often have several pieces in process at any one time, so if I get stuck on one, I can move on to another while the ideas percolate in my subconscious. There comes a point, however, when the chaos overtakes the creativity and I can’t think because there are too many piles of fabric and snippets of scraps littering the landscape of my studio. I’ve been spending time the last week or so in between some traveling and family obligations trying to get a handle on the chaos so my creativity can reemerge. And it seems to be working. I’ve got some sketches and some new ideas to try–now I just need to find the time to get started on them! I have several shows and exhibits coming up in the next few months, so I really need to get going on creating this new work. I’m excited by the possibilities, so stay tuned.

What do you do to jumpstart your creativity?

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.