tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139074432009-07-15T18:14:13.186-05:00Art Quilts by Judy Coates Perezjudy coates perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06858569382699600146judy.perez@comcast.netBlogger513125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13907443.post-70165771850063135412009-07-14T10:03:00.000-05:002009-07-14T10:03:00.248-05:00

On Saturday, I took my son to his origami society meeting at Garfield Conservatory here in Chicago and decided to take a walk around the botanical gardens and green houses.Many of the plants look like things you typically see in yards and gardens in California, so even though there were many pretty plants there were not that many that looked particularly exotic to me, except for in the Fern

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If you are like me you have been feeling that low grade stress building for months. I know I could really use a little creative get away. Want to spend a weekend in the woodlands of Wisconsin making copper and canvas mixed media books with me? The weekend of August 8-9, I will be sharing my process for making these books at Whispering Woodlands in Verona, WI, just outside of Madison.Besides

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We had Earthlink for 2 years when we lived in Los Angeles, I canceled service in November 2005 when I found that we needed to use Comcast for internet here. In March 2006 I recieved a bill that we owed $123, I told them I had canceled our service and they said they didn't have a record of that. Giving the benefit of the doubt that maybe I had overlooked that in all the craziness of the move paid

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As the summer warms up, I have set aside my cable sweater project and pulled out some lace weight yarn to knit. I have 3 skeins of Knitpicks Shadow in Jewels that has been sitting in one of my yarn baskets. Things have been pretty stressful and I decided I needed something that would be very relaxing and simple to knit. So I consulted one of my favorite reference books; A Second Treasury of

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A couple months ago a film crew showed up at the Origami Society Meeting my son Ty goes to. The film makers work for the city and usually film Mayor Daley's activities, but since they were on a hiatus from the Mayor they were working on a few personal projects, including this one. It was so funny to see Ty with his long hair again, he cut it really short a couple days after this was filmed. I

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I have accumulated quite a few beads from various quilt and bead shows over the years. Often they sit in bins for a long time before I get around to using them. I think it is challenging to string beads well, the individual beads are so beautiful, but it can be tricky to combine them together in a pleasing way. I am in such awe of people who do it well.This morning I wanted to string a necklace

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Bonnie has done another wonderful interview, this time with Robbi Joy Eklow. You can see Robbi's engineer mind at work here as she shows how she squares up her huge quilts. Brilliant!

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We heard some whoops and cheers around 6 tonight and looked out the window to see hundreds of people on bikes. They went rolling by for about 15 minutes. It was so fun seeing all the different kinds of bikes and other modes of wheeled transportation.This was my favorite.

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That's right, I am sewing plastic bags. I am putting kits together for my MIU Metal Magic workshop for Long Beach. In the kits I include 4 mini brads with all the other supplies. During my last workshop a few people lost a brad when opening the kit.I looked to see if I had some little bags to put the brads in this time, but couldn't find any. My solution was to make little packets from a gallon

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Look what just came in the mail, are you going?I will be teaching two classes this year and you can find them listed in this part of the catalog.Thursday is the Mixed Media Fabric classand each student will get to choose one of these kits to work with.here's an example of how one student used some of the fabric she made.My other class is painting Whole Cloth Quilts on Saturday,in this class we

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Next month I am going to International Quilt Festival Long Beach. I am so excited to check out the show, I haven't been to this one yet, and visit friends on the west coast. I will be teaching two workshops in Make It University, Fanciful Felted Fruits and Metal Magic.If you really like stitching with colorful embroidery floss and working with felted wool or have never done it before, Fanciful

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Isn't summer supposed to be that time when we pull out those lazy days "summer reading" books and lounge around sipping iced tea? Here in Chicago it is overcast and rainy, a little cool, and I have had too much to do. My son is taking a really great cultural anthropology class that has had me running all over the place. It is a wonderful class and I loved our visit to a mosque the other day but I

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There seems to be a lot of copper and iron around Chicago. The metal work is so colorful, with the iron colored from golden ocher to almost aubergine and the copper taking on lovely green and turquoise patinas with some soft mauve tones as well. Even the concrete sidewalks become stained with color. I love these grids.I was surprised when I stumbled upon this plaque on the wall of a building

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In Chicago there are so many interesting colorful rusty metal and concrete things with such lovely aged patinas. I often forget to bring my camera along with me when walking, but yesterday Nina reminded me about using the cell phone, duh, why don't I think of these things, I guess that's why we have kids.I like the way the aqua arches are echoed on my shoes.

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TAP, Transfer Artist Paper, is a coated paper that you put in your computer printer and print images onto, then you can cut out the images and iron them onto another surface; fabric, paper etc.One happy accident I had while transferring images to organza was that if you have fabric underneath the organza the transfer will be printed on the organza as well as the fabric (cotton in my case)

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Don't you hate it when you get to a class and realize that you don't have enough stuff to choose from or what you brought is not what you really want to do? Well, I am happy to provide an option for people to supplement their stash, I have made these fun kits for my Mixed Media Copper Book retreat in August.I have made six different theme packs containing 3 pages of vintage black and white images

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just cyberspace and I am happy to say my laptop is finally fixed, yay! I kept thinking the problem was resolved, then a day later my computer would run really slow and then freeze up after going to sleep. When I would start it up again I would get a flashing folder with a question mark on it and I would have to return to the Apple store.I went back 5 times over three weeks, thank goodness for

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and spend a summer weekend in the woodlands of Wisconsin making copper and canvas mixed media books with me? I have been invited to share my process for making these books at Whispering Woodlands in Verona, WI August 8-9, just outside of Madison.Besides having a fun, relaxing weekend doing collage, painting, working with fabric transfers and learning to emboss and color metal, you will also get a

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Did you know the color choices you make can transform an average piece of artwork into something spectacular? Be surprised and delighted by the effects and illusions you can create by understanding the mysteries of color. In this hands-on experiential class you'll learn key color concepts with visual examples, mix new paint colors, and create helpful charts, all providing you with the tools you’

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I had a lovely Mother's Day with my kids; Nina made me this awesome apron and this adorable squid ipod holder both of her own design. Ty made me this beautiful vase of origami roses with a promise to clean his room, truly a valuable gift, lol.In the mean time I have had a series of problems with my laptop culminating in getting my hard drive replaced today. I thought I had backed up everything I

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7 am8:30 amDaisy May's BBQ, put a lot of meat in to smoke last night. I chatted with these guys at 9 pm when I returned from picking up my laptop from Apple, it needed its graphic card replaced. They opened the doors to the smoker and showed me rack after rack of ribs, shoulders and even jerky, boy it looked and smelled like heaven.9:10 am9:40 amThe picnic tables were filled with many people from

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This is the finished copper book that I worked on embossing during Open Studios.I decided to make a change to the books by backing the copper covers with painted grungeboard for extra stability. I really like the addition, giving the books a sturdy and clean finish.

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Many of the members of the Chicago School of Fusing have birthdays in May; Laura Wasilowski, Frieda Anderson, Emily Parson and Anne Lullie. Life's busy schedules prevented Emily and Anne from making it this year and unfortunately Melody is now too far away to come for lunch.On Saturday Frieda and Laura picked up Nina and I and we drove to Quiltology, then the lovely yarn shop Nina.Quiltology is a

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Less than two hours after the events at Harpo studios on Friday I heard helicopters buzzing around and looked out the window and saw the street was blocked off to cross traffic as far as I could see east and west. I forgot that it was the time of the year for the Immigration march. The last few years it has happened on warm sunny days, so I was thrown off by our cold overcast weather and had not

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I woke up to a peaceful gathering of Invisiblechildren.com around Harpo studios at 5:30 this morning. They were here yesterday afternoon singing trying to get Oprah's attention. Their cause is to stop the war in Uganda and rescue the child soldiers and get the government to write policy to end the war. You can follow this organization on twitter "#therescue". You can see their live feed right

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