I’m excited to announce I’ll be teaching a 5 day workshop at the Estelle Center for the Creative Arts July 14-18, 2025.
The class is Abstracting from Art–a fun deep dive into making inspiration a reality. Start with an inspiration–from a photo, a painting, or even a favorite sweater–then take the color, the shapes, or maybe just the energy from that image and turn it into an original quilt.
We’ll just be using the photo to inspire us, not to represent it exactly.
I’ll demonstrate a variety of techniques you can use to turn your vision into a reality.
Sally Lightfoot – Cindy Grisdela
Galapagos Sally Lightfoot crab – Cindy Grisdela
The quilt top above was inspired by the red crabs on black lava rock that I photographed on a recent trip to the Galapagos, right. I found out they are called “Sally Lightfoot crabs”. I used curves and wonky triangles to represent the crabs on the dark lava rocks.
Sweater Inspiration – Cindy Grisdela
Above is a small piece inspired by a favorite sweater, right. I pulled the colors from the sweater and used a circular log cabin technique to imply flowers.
Taste of Summer – Cindy Grisdela
Taste of Summer, left, was inspired by the Paul Klee painting, Senecio, on the right. I used the colors from the painting and the idea of curves from the sides of the figure, then put the inspiration photo away and worked on responding to the lines and shapes in my composition. I like the idea that no one would know what the inspiration was unless they saw the two pieces side by side.
Mountain Sunrise – Cindy Grisdela (private collection)
Mountain Sunrise, above, was inspired by a photo of a mountain landscape in Vermont, which I have since misplaced. In order to create depth, I created the piece in three sections and offset the center section slightly. Angled Stripe units describe the mountains and Curved Strips stand in for the meadow in the foreground and the sky in the background.
This is a fun class if you’re interested in stretching your artistic skills and creating quilts that are uniquely your own. If you’d like to know more–please read the blog post I wrote earlier this year about this class below.
I hope you’ll join us in La Veta, CO next summer! Click on https://estellecreativearts.com/knitting-quilting-retreats/cindy-griselda-quilting-retreat-colorado for more information and to register. You can even rent sewing machines there so you don’t have to bring your own
There is lots of inspiration in the landscape around the center too–check out their Instagram feed @estellecreativearts for more.
Visit my Teaching tab on the website to see where else I’ll be teaching in 2025.