Jo Avery – the Blog

The Hills Are Alive and Quilts of 2023

It’s that odd time of year between Christmas and New Year when time seems to be more elastic and when I traditionally post a review of all the quilts I’ve made in the last 12 months. Every year my quilt total gets less and less! In many ways I think this is a good thing.

Poplars Quilt

It’s been quite a while since I shared a finished quilt here! This Poplars Quilt is a bit special as not only is it my biggest quilt ever it’s also been many years in the making. And its the first quilt to have it’s photo shoot enabled by a telehandler! Let’s go back to the

3 New Quilts and one is already a Prize Winner!

Back in January I finished 3 quilts. Now it’s March and I’m finally getting around to posting about them here! And one of them has already won a prize! I wrote about The Thread House Academy, our new online teaching platform, in my last post and this, followed by the Scottish Quilting Show in Glasgow

Watermelon Eyelashes Quilt and a Moxie Update

My first quilt finish of 2022 is called Watermelon Eyelashes. This is quite a long post as I’ll be discussing how you can put too much pressure on yourself and become paralysed by it. So buckle up! This quilt begun almost a year ago after I taught my Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Two Finished Flower Quilts and a Moxie Report

I have two finished flower themed quilts to share with you today! Both were quilted on my Handi Quilter Moxie and I have again learned a huge amount. So in this post we’ll be exploring the quilting of my Journey to the Centre of a Flower quilt and my new version of the Bedding Plants

The Thread House Club and Folk Dance BOM

I have all sorts of news to share here today. First of all the business sale of myBearpaw, the Edinburgh shop and studio I’ve been running for the last 9 years, has now concluded and the new owner Catriona is getting to grips with everything and ordering lots of new fabric! You can follow along

Oakshott Medallion Quarter Quilt

Happy New Year! It feels good to be getting back to normal after the festivities and I am delighted to share what I have been working on over the last week or so. Back in August the lovely folks at Oakshott  Fabrics asked me if I would like to design something using one of their

Dandelion Clock Quilt

My Dandelion Clock quilt is finished and ready to share! This all started when I designed a block for the Summer Sampler 2019 using my Freehand Foundation Piecing technique (tutorial available here).   I thought it looked a bit like the quarter of a dandelion clock (a VERY abstract interpretation of a dandelion clock!). I enjoyed making

Magazine News

I’m just catching my breath after a very busy October and popping in to share some news. Last week I was in Houston at Quilt Market and Quilt Festival, What an intense whirlwind that was! If you want to check out the photos I took of some of the incredible quilts I saw check out

Double Dish Fish Quilt

Did you think I’d gone for good?! I didn’t mean to leave a whole two months between posts (the longest I’ve ever left in nearly a decade!) but I was working on a really big project that took all my time and energy (there’ll be more info on this in the New Year) and this