Jo Avery – the Blog

Mini Quilt Sneak Preview

I have finally found some time to make a start on my mini quilt for the 6-12″ mini quilt swap on Flickr. Above is a sneak preview.  It is quite challenging as it can’t be square or rectangular (I have found a clever way round this without resorting to a circle!), and must only use …

Bookgroup

I am trying something new out on the blog. I have been recommending quite a few craft books on the blog over the last few months and, even if we sell them in the shop and I could mail order them, I have always just added a link to Amazon. The reason being that I …

new teacup pincushions

Here’s something I have been working on for a while. I actually made the first of these teacup pincushions at the same time as I made my hanging patchwork fishes.I made the 5 teacups first from old pattern book scraps and my own pattern. It would look a bit more like a teacup if I …

The sewing room revisited

I managed to save one piece of furniture from our gigantic furniture sell-off at the shop to go in my sewing room. This quite beautiful, and capacious, white chest of drawers.It was half price for ages but nobody seemed interested and I couldn’t bear to reduce it any further as I really wanted it for …

My first Saturday at home

For the last 10 years I have worked just about every Saturday in our shop. We used to sell kitchens and furniture and have 2 shops so I always needed to be in to take orders. Last Saturday was the final day for our second shop, the furniture has now all been sold and we …

roses and daisies cushion completed

Do you remember this lovely pattern I started a few weeks back? I blogged about it here.Well I have finished the cushion and I’m really chuffed with it. I think it is the nicest thing I have crocheted so far.I have just realised that it would have been better to photograph it against a darker …

Beginner’s Luck!

I am so excited! I won a giveaway!! And it was actually the first one I have got around to actually entering. Thanks so much to Margueritte from Adventures in Quilting and Sailing who tipped me off to this amazing giveaway on a Flickr group called Fresh Modern Quilts. They were celebrating their 2000 member, …

Greengate Cushion

What a busy and dramatic week!Not much time for crafting (again!), as my dear sister, Jane (or ‘middle-aged muddle’ as she is known on the blog) came to visit on Sunday. This unfortunately coincided with a return to winter up here in Scotland and the weather was really so bad we hardly left the house. …

I can’t stop crocheting!

As soon as I finished the Wooleater blanket I had crochet withdrawal symptoms and, to avoid a cold turkey situation, I just had to start another one!Actually I don’t think this one is going to turn into a blanket, I am thinking more of a cushion.I had this lovely Rooster arran wool left over from …

The Wooleater blanket is finished!

I have been struggling a bit in the last week or so. We have just about got back to normal (and survived!) our recent traumatic period and this has left me feeling a bit out of sorts. I think it is sometimes only after a difficult period has ended that you feel the full force …