Jo Avery – the Blog

How I spent my Christmas Break…

 … I spent it mainly sock knitting! Yes as predicted by many readers, the sock knitting was very addictive and once I started I wanted to get those socks finished!  And I guess I did need a bit of a rest… so despite all my quilt-making plans, I spent a lot of time on the …

Scottish Tapestry Update

Over Christmas I had a turn at the Scottish Tapestry Panel again. This is The Great Tapestry of Scotland that I blogged about here. Our group of 12 stitchers have been working hard and the animals are starting to fill in now.  Here is Susan’s gorgeous beaver. Isn’t he lovely? I love the way she …

The Great Tapestry of Scotland

I’ve been wanting to tell you all about this exciting project since I first became involved back in May, but there hasn’t really been much to see until recently.  I first heard about it on the radio one morning in Spring on the Today programme. James Naughtie was talking to Alexander McCall Smith about a …

Lesson planning

I’m very busy with my craft classes at the moment and now patchwork is vying with crochet as the most popular class. A few weeks back I taught a full day workshop in the porthole technique that Lu Summers had taught us at FQ London (I checked first to see if she was ok with …

Cedric the Badger

Meet my new woodland friend, Cedric the Badger. Cedric’s had a difficult birth but he’s here now and ready to be stitched. Yes I have a pattern all ready for sale on our website! This was the sneek-peak preview you got a few weeks back when I did a tutorial for the Raised Rose Stitch. …

Embroidery Stitch Tutorial

Do you remember this Raised Rose stitch that I used in my Sampler Tree embroidery? I have had a few requests for a tutorial so, in this post, I try my best to give one! I first ‘found’ this stitch by googling ’embroidery stitches’ and looking at the images. Above is what I found. Hopefully you …

Far Across the Sea quilt finished!

At last I’ve finished my Cherish Circle Quilt! The Cherish Circle is part of Do Good Stitches, a charity bee on Flickr. Every month we make 2 blocks  each and every month a new quilt is born to give away to somebody deserving. Our group has made some really gorgeous quilts (take a look at …

Embroidery Pattern launch with FREEBIE!

 You have been asking for these and I have been promising them, and at last I can announce… … that my embroidery patterns are ready to buy!! Thanks to my IT consultant (*cough* husband), who has been working hard on this all week, you can now buy a pdf of any of the designs on …

Sampler Tree Embroidery with extra owls

I have been having a week off work for a wee holiday, just ‘staycationing’ at beautiful Shangri La Farm. But seeing as I have picked the wettest week of the year for it, I have been inside sewing most of the time! This has given me time to catch up on ARRR8 and Cherish Circle …

FQ London Sample Swap – Embroidered Portraits

I’ve finally finished my pieces for the FQ London Sample Swap. Basically you make 4 pieces of something and swap them in groups of 5 so that everyone comes away with 4 different things. I was very keen to consolidate my recent woodland embroidery theme, so I thought some mini embroideries featuring my cast of …