Elaine Poplin has been working with color for decades. She knows it the way some people know a language they grew up speaking—fluently, instinctively, without having to think about the grammar. Which creates an interesting problem when you’re trying to teach it.
“Translating what I do with pointing and grunting into language is a bit hard,” she admits. So she finds other ways to communicate. Chess analogies. Spelling bees. Harry Potter references. Whatever it takes to bridge the gap between knowing and explaining.
That earnest problem-solving spirit is exactly what makes the Color Camp retreat she’s co-leading with Karla Overland something quilters won’t find anywhere else. Two artists, two complementary brains, one shared conviction: the biggest thing standing between most quilters and the work they want to make isn’t technique. It’s confidence.

The fabric bundles for this year's Cherrywood Challenge.

What “Color Confidence” Actually Means

Both women keep returning to the word confidence—not as a platitude, but as a diagnosis. Poplin’s husband illustrated the problem perfectly when he decided to make a quilt. He chose fabrics carefully, sewed well, finished it—and didn’t like it. She knew immediately why. “He chose mediums and darks because that’s what he likes. He didn’t realize you have to have contrast.” She pauses. “You’ve got to have Snape for Harry Potter to work.”
He named the quilt “Extra Medium.” It was flat—not from poor technique, but because every element operated at the same value. The phrase Poplin returns to cuts right to it: color has all the fun, but value does all the work. Most quilters, she’s found, pour everything into color selection and never think about value at all—until the finished quilt lands flat and they can’t figure out why.
Overland hears the confidence problem constantly: Oh, the Cherrywood Challenge? Amazing. But there’s no way I could do that. Her response: “Have you sat down and tried? Well, no.” She’s been sewing since she was 10 and didn’t arrive where she is on the second try or the twenty-second. The Cherrywood Challenge, she’s found, has a way of forcing the issue—and the quilters who push through it are often the ones who’ve never designed anything on their own before. “They’re so proud of themselves,” she says. “I’ve never. I’ve never. I’ve never. And the challenge just forces them to do it.”
Poplin’s approach in class is equally direct. Students afraid of cutting into precious yardage can experiment with her fabric. “I bring plenty of mine and answer questions with it.” Overland’s ritual for the retreat goes further: everyone pours their favorite beverage, raises it together—and then picks up the rotary cutter and cuts. “It takes off the preciousness of the fabric.”

The Retreat Itself

Overland opens the week with what she calls Deconstructed Color Theory—working backward from beautiful finished work to understand why it works. Poplin follows with her stained-glass technique, which creates luminous transparency effects without complex piecing. Students design on paper first, choose their colors, then build. Days three and four bring mark-making with fabric pens, the option to translate their work into a wearable poncho, and finishing techniques. The Cherrywood Challenge gets its own presentation as both inspiration and invitation.
But the structure, both instructors emphasize, is not the point. “We don’t have a very tight itinerary,” Overland says. “I’m more excited to see what we don’t plan for.” Poplin agrees: “I’m going to show you a way. And if you have a different way, I’d love to see it, because I want to learn, too.”
That openness extends to the retreat format itself. Being around other people making things—what Poplin calls “filling the tank”—is part of what makes a week like this work, even for introverts. “A retreat is a non-threatening way to learn,” she says, “because you can disappear into your work when you get overwhelmed by the people.”

A sample of a garment you could choose to make at the Color Camp retreat.

Come Ready to Not Know

Both women describe themselves, without apology, as a little rebellious. Tell them they can’t do something and they’ll do it. It’s probably why their philosophies converged so naturally—neither is interested in showing participants the way to do something. They want to show them a way and see where students take it.
“Our expectation,” Overland says, “is that they are going to steer the boat their own direction.”
So come without a fixed idea of what you’ll make. Come a little afraid. Come with a color combination you’ve never had the nerve to try. When a student says “I can’t do this,” Poplin’s instinct is to add one word: yet. “It makes all the difference.” The confidence to problem-solve—not just to take risks, but to look at what went wrong and try again—is what both women are really teaching. The stained glass and the ponchos and the color theory are just the vehicle.
Color Camp with Karla Overland and Elaine Poplin runs August 25–28, 2026 at the Estelle Center for Creative Arts, with a meet-and-greet the evening of Monday, August 24. All skill levels welcome.