Jo Avery – the Blog

Corsage Crazy!

I have been having great fun making these crochet corsages for Christmas presents. Each one is a bit different as I am making then up as I go along. I couldn’t really find a pattern I liked so have just been experimenting. It is very satisfying putting the different colour combinations together and choosing the

New York!

Well I’m back from NYC! And what an amazing city it is! We had a wonderful time and I was really upset to leave. I’m usually always pleased to get back to Edinburgh, but not this time.I managed to just about fit everything in that I planned. All the usual stuff, Empire State Building, Grand

Liz’s visit

I had a lovely weekend with my best friend Liz. She came up from London on the train on Friday afternoon and we headed straight for the haberdashery department in John Lewis!Liz has had a terrible year fighting off breast cancer (successfully, I am very happy to say). She started this beautiful blanket made of

Golden Wedding Quilt

As promised a few weeks back, here is the next installment from my ‘family quilt’ archive.This one is a bit special as it was made for my parents Golden Wedding Anniversary 11 years ago (they celebrated their diamond wedding last year!). It is really a fabric photo album. I had to give my father a

Tetbury

We had a lovely weekend away visiting our friends, Sarah and Tim, in Wales. On the Saturday we went for a trip to Tetbury in the Cotswolds, famous for it’s antique shops. I was desperate for some wool to start experimenting with corsages for Christmas presents, so had checked ahead that there was definately a

Old Family ‘Birthday Quilts’

One of the results of writing this blog and having my Flickr page is that I have had a chance to capture and archive lot’s of older quilts that I previously only had snap shots of (or no image at all). So I took advantage of the trip I made to visit my parents last

Blogger’s Quilt Festival

Sun Wheel Mandala QuiltBack in the early 1990’s the Crafts Council in London held a wonderful exhibition of ‘New American Quilts’ which I attended along with a couple of accompanying lectures. The exhibition totally blew my mind and I realised there was so much more I could do with quilting than just Log Cabin ‘quilt-in-a-day’.One

First crocheted hat!

I have recently been popping in to the lovely wool shop, K1 Yarns, in Victoria Street (in the Old Town in Edinburgh) for supplies of black wool to finish the Granny Square Afghan. It is a gorgeous shop in one of my favourite shopping streets in Edinburghhttp://www.k1yarns.co.uk/with friendly staff and nice comfy chairs to sit

Granny Square Afghan

Finally completed, after 18 years!Well that’s when I started the middle (slightly faded) part of this blanket, as a cot quilt for Jacob (now 17). I obviously washed it a few times so that part has fused and almost ‘felted’ nicely.As this was the first thing I had ever crocheted, I was very fond of

Hot Air Balloon Cot Quilt

Baby Oscar (my Great-nephew) has finally arrived! Actually he wasn’t late but his mummy had convinced me he would be coming early so I’ve had the cot quilt finished for a few weeks without being able to share it.You can now see it in all it’s glory with the little ‘balloon animals’ sitting in their