Jo Avery – the Blog

Little House Pincushion Tutorial

Here is an early Christmas present for all my lovely readers – a tutorial for my Little House Pincushion! Complete with FREE patterns! As you can see above, I made this latest little house pincushion as a Christmas Cottage, complete with a reindeer and snow! And not only is it a super cute pincushion, but

Cathedral Window Pillow

Well I have had quite a week with all the snow, ice and traffic chaos up here in Scotland. I can’t be bothered to bore you with all the details, but we did finally manage to get my father on a flight home on Thursday, but that was only after 2 failed attempts to take

Snow, Pincushions and Brazillian Dolly revisited

First of all this is the reason I haven’t made it in to work today. Look at that snow! It certainly looks beautiful at Shangri La Farm today (especially the barn with it’s newly painted doors) but it’s not great for business because I have had to leave our shop closed today as conditions are

Sleepy Owl Pyjama Case

Brrr! It’s getting cold at night now, and at the end of the day all I want to do is climb into my jim-jams and curl up on the sofa with a bit of hand sewing or crocheting. But the next morning my pyjamas are just lying around on the bed! Now I am not

Autumn Leaves

I mentioned in an earlier post about how busy I have been recently making things for my shop, well here are some of the fruits of my labours (well more foliage than fruits…). You may remember the Leaf Needlecases from a batch I made earlier in the year. They are adapted from a beautiful Japanese

Scrappy Button Mandela

  Here is my finished scrappy hoop for ‘The Scrappy (Hoops) – a Modern Swap‘. I have called it ‘Scrappy Button Mandela. A Mandela is a kind of prayer wheel that aids meditation. It is my first hoop attempt and I am really pleased with it. I pieced the middle circles then needle-turn appliqued the