Author: Judy Coates Perez

  • Chicago Quilt Festival

    This is the offical greeting party for quilt festival. You can find Laura and Frieda at the ArtFabrik booth.This is my sister Deb working on her fabric book and me painting in the virtual studios being observed by Allison from the cool sister art duo Art Girlz.Here I am with our group quilt Fauna in…

  • Flora and Fauna

    Flora detailFlora and Second Nature are our two group quilts that came before Fauna. They can be seen on the Quilting Arts Website here. If you havn’t seen Fauna yet, you need to go pick up a copy of Quilting Arts magazine (April May issue). I will be painting a sample based on my latest…

  • Fantastic Lecture on Creativity

    Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. Click on the picture of him in the sidebar…

  • Virtual Studios at Quilt Festival

    International Quilt Festival/Chicago is coming up April 13-15. This year Quilting Arts magazine is expanding beyond Make-It University classes to also have virtual studios. Two to four different artists at a time will be creating art throughout the day friday, saturday and sunday. My sister Deb and I will be guest artists on Friday and…

  • Dad, I love you and will miss you terribly

    March 26, 1935 – March 27, 2007I am flying to Maine in the morning and will be off line for the next 5 days.

  • New felt hat

    This is another felted hat just like my brown one (pattern from Fiber Trends. This one is knit with Knitpicks Merino Style wool. It is lighter weight and not as fuzzy as the brown hat knit with Lambs Pride bulky. It took about a skein and a half of the color Storm and I used…

  • Fauna Makes the Cover of Quilting Arts!

    Fauna Makes the Cover of Quilting Arts!

    Here is what Pokey had to say about it on her blog: “Here’s a sneak peak of our next cover of Quilting Arts. (I just got my advanced copy yesterday). This is a detail of “Fauna”, a collaborative quilt by Kathy York, Vicki Hallmark, Frances Holliday Alford, Judy Coates Perez, and Julie John Upshaw. Never…

  • Lace Shawl #2

    Well, here is my second attempt to knit the Print O The Wave Stole by Eunny Jang. The top picture is the finished shawl as it came off the needles. Not much to look at. Once the shawl was blocked it was amazing how much bigger it got, this is a twin size sheet folded…

  • Happy Birthday Deb

    This box should be coming to your door any day now.My sister has a thing for bees, so I had a great time searching google images for crazy pics of bees to glue on to this package. I found a movie poster for Invasion of the Bee Girls, an old newspaper masthead, chinese postage stamps…

  • My first lace shawl

    This is supposed to be the Print O The Wave Stole by Eunny Jang. I cannot believe what a challenge this was, how many times I ripped it out started over again and how many mistakes there are in it! The most glaring mistake is the border. I did not realize that you are supposed…

  • Auditions with Oprah

    I woke up this morning to the sound of a saxophone playing in the distance and remembered that today is the day Oprah is having auditions at her studio for a new show called The Big Give, a pay it forward challenge. This is what I see when I look off my balcony, I live…

  • Thread Heaven

    There is nothing like having organized thread at your finger tips when you are sewing. For years I kept my thread in plastic containers used for storing matchbox cars that I bought at Target. But Target stopped selling them a few years back and I soon ran out of places to put my thread. My…

  • Another break for pottery

    I had to take a break from quilting, my upper back turned into a big cramp, So i have backed way off on the hours at the machine and have been knitting and going to the Illinois Homeschool Conference with the kids. So I will show some of my pottery to keep things somewhat intersting.…

  • A curtain to hide the clutter

    I made this curtain yesterday to block the view of flat files and shelving as you enter our loft. The curtain is a long strip cut from a bolt of buckram that my mother in law gave me a few years ago. The cloth is fairly sheer, so I drew the design on two layers…

  • Happy Valentines Day!

  • Quilting So Far

    I have outline quilted all the animals, tree, leaves and pomegranates. Now I am beginning to quilt the black background. The black on black quilting is very easy to see on the quilt but unfortunately it does not photograph well. So I am posting a small picture of how the quilt looks in reality and…

  • Knit Arm Warmers

    Yesterday my baby turned 17! And I gave her the goth insprired arm warmers I made. Perfect considerering it is 2°F right now and she is wearing a short sleeve t-shirt. I refuse to leave the house for the next several days, not until the temperature gets up to at least 10°F! I have never…

  • Design and Painting Process

    Design and Painting Process

    I started this piece with the idea of making a Mexican tree of life quilt. I knew it should be bright, colorful and graphic in style. For several weeks I carried my sketchbook with me as I went about our home schooling classes and activities and when I had some time I sat and drew…