Jo Avery – the Blog

Buzzy, busy bees

It seems like all I hear about on the blogs these days are Bees! No not furry, little, buzzy things but Quilting Bees (I am constantly explaining this to non-quilty friends!). I have recently got involved in my first Bee, the ‘Quick Christmas Bee’, organised by Maria of Me and Ma blog. There are only …

Catching up in the sewing room

 Remember the Patchwork Box Cushions I made for my shop a few months back? Well they all sold really quickly and I even managed to get a couple of commissions to make more of them, but to bespoke dimensions.    These 2 are for ‘Curtain Clare’ who used to make the curtains and blinds for …

The Doll Quilt is finished!

Yay! All finished and ready to go! I have loved making this doll quilt and taking part in DQS9, even though our house move (right in the middle of it!) did mean I couldn’t be as active in the group pool/discussions as I would have liked. I would love to be involved with the next …

A tour of Shangri-La Farm!

As promised, I am now ready to take you on a whistlestop tour of our Shangri-La Farm! We have not officially named it this as there has been a few negative reactions. It was a bit of a joke to start with but I like it and so do lots of my loyal readers, so …

Harrogate, owls and a lovely package

I have been off to the Harrogate Trade Fair this week to do our buying for the next season. I had great plans to take a lot of photos and give you all a lovely visual tour. However I came down with a nasty cold not long after we arrived and it was all I …

Bearpaw Label Tutorial

I have been selling quite a few of my Bearpaw handmade goods over the last few weeks, through my ‘real’ shop (including 2 of the patchwork box cushions and 2 of the tote bags I featured on here recently!). So I needed to replenish my stock of ‘Bearpaw labels’. And because I have now perfected …

Doll Quilt Swap 9 update

This is how far I had got on Friday with my DQS9 quilt. It looks kind of finished, doesn’t it? But I still have a way to go with embellishments.  I really enjoyed making the trees. They are all machine pieced and then hand quilted. I even made a ‘fancy’ back (for the first time!). …

Winners!!

The Random Generator (my husband, Jonathan) has spoken! Jonathan picked these 3 names out of a bowl today in this order: 1. Shayla Sharp 2. Marg (Raphael’s Mum) 3. Katrina Well done you winners! I will be emailing each of you next week to get your addresses, but if you see this first please feel …

A Brazilian dolly and 2 African blocks

After the rampant capitilism of the last few weeks, making things and (attempting) to sell them for my own ends, I thought it was time I did something more altruistic. So after a Saturday spent working on my Doll Quilt (more on that another day), I dedicated Sunday to some ‘cherrity work’ (said in Smashy …