Jo Avery – the Blog

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Autumn 2011

Welcome! Today I am taking part in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival. This is the 5th BQF I have taken part in and it is a real highlight of my bloggy year. Usually I have a lovely new, full-sized quilt to share with you all, but I have had quite a challenging 6 months and so

Fish, leaves and better times ahead

Well, I have had quite a month and so apologies again for being so quiet. My problems have all been work related and as I want this blog to remain a calm, happy oasis for me (and hopefully for you), I don’t really want to go in to too much detail here. For anyone who

I feel like a proud parent

First of all I must say a massive THANK YOU to everybody who commented after my last post and gave me such great advice over my problem QAYG project. Yes, the grey will definitely be going! And you all had such sensible suggestions that I know I will come up with the best solution soon.

I’m really stuck…

I started this project a few weeks back with the idea that I would get a full day workshop out of it for later this year (for my Bearpaw Craft Classes venture at the shop). I have made these string blocks using the QAYG (quilt-as-you-go) method which I first tried out making blocks for the

Hexalong Liberty Star Quilt

Hexalong Liberty star quilt – close up, a photo by bearpawandbearpaw on Flickr. In a last ditch attempt to get my blog to work, I am trying to blog from Flickr. If this shows up in the Dashboard then I am back in business! later: Well it looked like that did eventually work – in

Blogger is being very mean too me!

I first published this post last Thursday *a few weeks ago!* but something must have gone wrong with Blogger as it appears it has not been showing up in the dashboard/reader. I thought you had all gone very quiet, and was even more alarmed after I published another post yesterday and, again, heard a deafening

Vintage linen notebook covers

I have been busy making new projects for my Craft Workshops. Here is the latest, notebook covers made with pieces of vintage embroidered linen. About a year ago I bought a big haul of these from a church who had been left them in a church member’s will. I wrote about it in this post.

Teaching People to Crochet…

…is probably the most exhausting thing I have ever done! More on that later, lets look at some more of my baby owls first. They appear to be hatching out of the wool in this shot! I decided that a great way to promote the new wool range I am stocking in my shop was

I am a fabric magnet!

After a long weekend off, I returned to work yesterday to find 3 packets waiting for me.  2 of these I was expecting, but an airmail packet was a bit of a mystery.  When I opened it and found this cute little mini quilt, my first thought was that someone had sent me their Doll

Doll quilts sent and received!

Amongst all the chaos of my recent life, I did actually manage (just) to get my DQS11 finished and in the mail by the deadline! And here it is, all 14 inches of it. You can read more about this quilt here, including a wee tutorial on English Paper Piecing. Here is the back, I