Jo Avery – the Blog

Sophie’s Universe CAL 2015

These days I am in the enviable position of making quilts and sewing for a living. I have a wonderful life and every day I count my blessings. But making your living with your hobby does give you one problem – you need a new hobby! crochet is also part of my working life as

Crochet blankets – one finished, one started!

I have a crochet finish!! After 3 years my Wool-eater blanket is complete! This is a wonderful free pattern from Sarah London’s blog and one of the first crochet patterns I tackled. I finished my first wool-eater blanket about 5 years ago for a friend’s 50th birthday, you can see it here. It was made with

How I used my embroidery and FREE workshops!

Excuse me a moment while I blow the cobwebs off this blog! A bit of a posting break occurred due to a lingering virus, too many magazine deadlines, a lot of classes and a 4 day show at Glasgow SECC that involved 4 EPP workshops a day! Today is my first proper day off in

Fresh Sewing Day

My participation in Lynne’s Fresh Sewing Day usually totals about one a year, mainly because I either forget or else feel I have not really achieved enough in the last month for a whole post. But May 2014 has been a productive month with 3 quilts finished and shared. That’s my Dresden Porthole (bottom middle),

Crochet beginnings and endings

Let’s make time for some crochet! It’s been a long time since I devoted a whole post to crochet and yet I always have some on the go and still love it with a passion. We’ll start with the endings. Yes, I finally actually finished a crochet blanket! This is my Ripple Baby Blanket, made

FAL 2nd Quarter

Just snuck in to this quarters Finish-a-long!  With just a few hours to go before the deadline I am listing again the UFOs that I failed dismally to finish last quarter. I only managed to finish one of the six projects I listed at the beginning of the year and so I am featuring them

FAL 2014 – I am joining in!

I only managed to take part in the first quarter of last year’s finish-along, and only managed to finish 2 things! How useless am I? To tell you the truth I am actually quite a good finisher so I don’t usually have loads of projects to add. But this year I seem to have found

The Sweet Life Pillow

Here’s a little EPP project I’ve been working on for the last month and now it’s finished and off to a very special destination tomorrow! The nice people at Blend Fabrics asked me to make something with Cori Dantini’s current line ‘The Sweet Life’ for their booth at Quilt Market!! So my cushion will be

July Fresh Sewing Day

I am so pleased that I’m finally managing to link up with Lynne’s Fresh Sewing Day! After doing the first couple of months 2 years ago I’ve been constantly forgetting about it ever since – doh! I have got SOOO much finished in June! Look at the mosaic up there – it’s chock-a-block! And that’s

A few wee makes

Do you remember a few months back I showed you a new magazine that featured my African Flower Crochet Bag? The publishers wanted to get pre-orders so had mocked up a cover showing lots of the featured bags. Well here is that actual magazine, Creative Bagmaking, out just yesterday. And as you can see my