As Dr. Frankenstein said, "It's alive.... ALIVE!!!!"

A family member said it looks like the outlet in A Christmas Story.

So.

I have been away for a little bit.  In that time, my finger healed, I got the all clear from my doctor to quilt again, and I did tons of things for the comic book day job including a bunch of travel.

But I'm back with a renewed vigor and and I have lots and lots to tell you.  

I'm going to Houston in a week and I will be blogging the show each night.

I've been experimenting in the studio with all kinds of new fun electronics, as you can see above.  

I'll be posting new work shortly and much more.  

Thank you for bearing with my absence from the bloggy world, and I'm back in the saddle, ready for new adventures.

More soft circuit quilts!

I made another little video at the same time as the last one, which is why I STILL have bad hair.  I taped these without a script, so I apologize for the rambling.  More on how to do these types of quilts will come down the road, I hope! 
Enjoy!
PS. A huge shout out to my husband, Joe, my editor extraordinaire!

Come see me in Houston!

I will be part of Quilting Arts' MIU/Open Studios area at the International Quilt Festival in Houston!  Come and see me on November 6th from 4 to 6pm  and Sunday November 7th from 11:45 am to 1:45 pm.  
I will be demoing some pretty cool things at these times in the Open Studios area of the giant Make It University area.  I hope you will come by and say hello, take one of my new MOO cards, and enjoy yourself!  I'm completely bowled over to be part of this. Yay!
This is a photo by Helen Gregory of Quilting Arts, showing Judy Coates Perez during her Open Studios time in Chicago. 
This is just one of many things that's going on right now, so hold tight... it's gonna be a crazy ride!

CUH-RAY-ZEE!!

Holy moley is it nuts over here.  I'll give you a brief update... 

I was out of town for New York Comic Con, and then my father has surgery on his knee.  He's convalescing at my house while I am trying not only to work full time but work on my gallery show pieces for the end of the month.  The quilt guild I am president of is having a small quilt auction, and my mother in law is coming to visit at the end of the month as well.  Just after that is Houston, the IQA show.  WOW.

Nuts, right?  But that's life for you. I do indeed plan to get back to weekly techniques and more very soon.  Please bear with me.(Or sympathize with my husband who has to put up with me.) 
PS. Not sure why I tagged this as Chickens, but that's how crazy it is over here! :)

What i did at CREATE... or how Cheryl got her groove back.

As you may know, this summer has been extremely busy and while I am happy to have made my sister's wedding flowers, after the initial design they were a bit monotonous to make.  I felt pretty uninspired, and because my work schedule freed up, I spent Friday 8/27 at CREATE in Rosemont.
Now, I don't have pictures of the event because I was silly and didn't bring my camera, but you can see some other great recaps and pictures here, here, here and here.
Of course, I saw all of my friends there, and that alone was incredible.  The hardest working staff I've ever run across, Pokey Bolton and Lindsay Murray were there, and Pokey says I'm going to love Houston, which is getting me super jazzed up to go.  And that's just 10 minutes into the event!
My class was thread painted art quilts with Elin Waterston.  Elin is an incredible artist and it was so wonderful to learn from a teacher like her.  Patient, kind, and extremely talented.  She really demystified the process and I had a great time working on my project (which will be in another blog post for the return of Technique of the Week!) Elin is co-author of the Art Quilts at Play and the Art Quilt Workbook, some of whose techniques I have tried this year.
I got to have dinner with some new and old friends, including Belinda Spiwak. 
CREATE also had a "store" onsite that not only showcased Bernina sewing machines, but also a wide variety of Interweave titles and other books and supplies so you can take your creative juices home and continue working.
To wrap up our evening, it was time for the Artist's Faire, and it was AMAZING. Several artists had table "booths" and you could walk and browse lots of art supplies and original art.  The art was amazing!  Beautiful stuff from Kelli Perkins, Jamie Fingal, Jane Lafazio, and many many more.  Also lots of vintage collage materials from various vendors and some amazing collage artists from the pages of Cloth Paper Scissors.  Of course, it was the place to be, and I ran into my friends Melanie Testa, Judy Coates Perez (click her link for super cool recaps of the event) and my new friends from the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild! (HI Karen! HI Sue!) 
Want to see the few things I got at Create? Commence the showing and telling!

The book and TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) are both going to be used later this year for a Technique of the Week! And of course, they had all the newest magazines, so I picked up the latest QA GIFTS.  It is such a great issue.

I loved the ephemera booths. There were lots of them, and if I were a collage artist, I'd be in heaven, but as it were, I saw a couple of things I HAD to have for my creepy victorian parlor. (You know about my year round haunted parlor, right?) So this tiny (and I mean tiny, these do not even come close to fitting around my neck) set of faux pearls and the cool eyeglasses and case only cost me $6 total! 

This is a gorgeous teapot from Altered Ever After, and is featured in an issue of a magazine this month!

These lovely brass findings were super cute on the gorgeous sample artworks by Rene, and I picked up these tiny sets for a future project. 

So, that's about it, and I have to say that I came home SUPER jazzed up to start creating again, and I wish I had allotted more than one day, but the wedding was important and that's OK.  There's going to be another one, and that's great too.  I think the folks at CPS and QA have a lot to be proud of, and I am looking forward to going again next year!
    

Psst. It's done.

I did it.. I submitted my article.  
Many thanks to Kelly, Carol, Diane, Toni, Megan, and Debbi!  Your swift kick in the pants encouraged me to just get over it and send it off already! ha ha!  
Now the long wait for a response begins... 

So? Where have I been?

Scandinavia! No, really!  My DH and I took our first vacation in 3 years and took a big trip to Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. It was fantastic, I highly recommend it!
Now, as far as quilting goes, I thought ahead and brought 2 weekly projects with me. My trip was over both weekends, when I usually do my weekly project, and I knew I'd miss 2 weeks if I didn't do due diligence on planning.  Both were hand projects so that I could do them without a machine, but hand techniques were much harder to come up with than the ones I had planned previously.  I hope to get my act together soon this week and get pictures and descriptions posted.
I will say that I was very glad to have the projects VERY well planned in advance so as not to have too much thought in doing them on the trip.  I was to be relaxing, not fretting over the techniques, so having everything I needed to do planned in advance was really helpful.  
I hope you enjoyed the automatic posts I set up while I was away, and I plan to do more of that in the future, as I sometimes get to sit and blog in fits and bursts, and I know I always like to read blogs that update often. 
Anyway, I hope to have the new Techniques of the Week up soon and thanks for your patience!