Jo Avery's bright and brilliant improv quilts

November 11, 2025

In addition to the many, many quilts on display at the Festival of Quilts there’s also galleries dotted around the exhibition space, and one of my favourites was Jo Avery’s Textile Gallery. I love her brightly coloured bold quilts and it was great to see them up close and first hand.

The gallery was in celebration of Jo’s new book - Journey to the Centre of a Quilter in which she shares her inspiration and the importance of play. I don’t have the book, but it’s definitely a contender for my Christmas List - though I’m under no illusion that my quilts would ever be as fabulous as these, though I think they’d have their own level of fabulousness!

JO AVERY’S TEXTILE GALLERY, FESTIVAL OF QUILTS 2025

Even in these smaller spaces the walls were loaded with quilts, and it was hard to know where to look, or where to start but my feet led me to those that most appealed to me, funny how that happens when our brains aren’t sure isn’t it?

What caught my eye about the quilt above is the detail in the quilting, which stands out with the light thread on the dark background. And then looking at the main motif, and seeing the amount of detail there too. Totally mind blown.

I loved the improv quilt below, and then loved it even more when I saw it was called Jukebox.

JUKEBOX, JO AVERY’S TEXTILE GALLERY, FESTIVAL OF QUILTS 2025

But again the detail is mind blowing, and the size of this one - it’s 142cm by 217cm - and actually reminds me of a jukebox we had in our childhood home, which was I’m sure, equally as big.

What Jo’s quilts made me realise was how simple shapes repeated can be so effective, and look anything but simple as the quilts above and below both demonstrate.

And when those shapes are repeated and mixed with other shapes such as the houses or the wavy landscapes below, they become something truly fantastic.

POPLARS, JO AVERY’S TEXTILE GALLERY, FESTIVAL OF QUILTS 2025

This one brought me straight back to that time I tried quilting in a circle, which was one of the most stressful quilting sessions I’ve had so far, but this one makes me want to try again. Though on a much smaller scale!

What I also liked is how Jo’s style of quilting also works for flower shapes, and this Dream Flower quilt below is stunning in its boldness - I’d say simplicity, but there is nothing simple about the detail here, as each petal contains a different improv pieced or organic applique pattern.

DREAM FLOWER, JO AVERY’S TEXTILE GALLERY, FESTIVAL OF QUILTS 2025

The last quilt I’m sharing here today is this Giant Trilobite (which are extinct marine arthropods - I just had to Google it) and once again it features the bright colours, the circles and more improv pieced and needle-turn applique patterned segments.

GIANT TRILOBITE, JO AVERY’S TEXTILE GALLERY, FESTIVAL OF QUILTS 2025

Aren’t they all amazing?

If you enjoyed this post from my visit to the Festival of Quilts 2025 then please do check out my other posts from the show. Even though my mind was blown by the sheer volume of quilts on display, I’m pretty sure I’ll be going again!

Celebrating flora in the Gargano Peninsula

October 30, 2025

One of the features and highlights across all of our walks exploring (a very small part of) the Gargano Peninsula was the flora we encountered along the way. In my posts from each walk I’ve shared some of that, but I’ve so much more to share and that’s what I’m going to touch on today. I’ve picked my absolute favourite photos from many, many more and while I don’t necessarily know what every plant is, I know they are all beautiful, sometimes quite different ways.

You’ll not be surprised to learn that the majority of my photos, and those in this post, come from the most challenging walk of the holiday - the one where we went down, up and up some more! But as hard as I found the walk, especially the last of the ups and I absolutely wouldn’t want to do it again, it was also amazing and I’m glad we did it. I’m even more glad we completed it before the rain came!

A sharp spiky thistle with purple flower you wouldn't want to mess with

possibly fennel seedheads - lime green and complete with a bug or two

The hardy Cistus growing amongst rocks, but still flowering (just one mind!)

Two pine cones among the bare branches, all greyed with the weather and silver lichen

A great big puff ball of a plant - think at least 3 times the size of a dandelion

Honeysuck with its delicate dancing trendils

But it wasn’t just that walk, as we walked back down to the coast the next day these lilies growing alongside the roadside were stunning, as were the hibiscus growing through another wire mesh fence much later in the day.

A mass of white lilies behind a mesh fence, not sure if that's for their safety or mine!

Another mesh fence, this time with a possibly hibiscus flowering through it - yellow flowers and long scarlet tendrils

Our last hotel also had impressive grounds, and glorious plants including long time favourites of mine, the passion flower and red hot pokers.

five stems of red hot poker flowers with a spikier than usual looking base

A pale blue head of a flower, not a hydrangea but that kind of shape

The scent too as we left the main complex and walked back to our room was absolutely divine. It’s true that many things make a great holiday, and this had everything we could have wanted, so if you get the chance to explore for yourself then most definitely go.

Marmalade hearts

October 28, 2025

I’ve made another quilt as part of my quilting ‘stretch’ project using the block from Sherri at A Quilting Life’s mystery block a month. As I said then I don’t know if I’ll manage to make a quilt a month, but I won’t really know unless I try…

And now I don’t want to not achieve this goal I’ve set and so on I go.

This month I’m sharing my eleventh charity quilt and my new pile is now growing, since the first nine have now been donated to the Mansfield Coordinator of Project Linus UK.

My eleventh charity quilt

I looked at this month’s block and thought to myself ‘oh boy, how many small pieces in that basket’ and I seriously considered my sanity and why a hobby might get you cutting up bits of fabric, only to sew them back together. Oh boy for sure.

Once again, and like last month’s quilt my plan was to avoid pinks if I could. I’ve had some red material which I wanted to use for a while and it just hadn’t happened, so this month I tried harder and found myself drawn to matching it with some blues, but mostly oranges - hence the marmalade part in its name. The hearts are on the red material and there’s also smaller red hearts on a white background used in some of the ‘baskets’ so the quilt once again named itself.

A selection of red/orange and blue/purple toning fabrics pulled from my stash for the quilt's borders

The fabrics I’ve used in this quilt are from a mix of fat quarters I’ve had for a while (the red hearts, the cats, and the purple and blue flowered pieces), a shirt of MOH’s (the multi-colour striped fabric), some old curtains (the patchwork orange material) and two pieces of fabric I’m sure I used when I was quilting back in the 90s (the large flowered piece and the blue striped smaller piece). So it definitely fits in with using my stash, and sustainable sewing.

I’d made the four central blocks relatively early in the month, and almost without issue. Actually that’s not true, for the first time I had to completely restart a block which I’ll share more about in my next ‘craft room additions’ post as I think it will fit better there.

Laying out the borders

Learning from my ‘half the scraps’ quilt where I learnt it’s hard to do random, and that my eyes prefer balance I decided to lay out the borders and plan this more than I usually would as I knew I’d have to add in some toning materials as I was sure I didn’t have enough not to do this.

Laying out the four basket/centre blocks and laying two of the border fabrics alongside checking placement and layout

And it came together pretty easily - I was keen to have the baskets of the central blocks radiating out from the centre of the quilt, so laying it out like this helped me get that right too.

the four blocks, all with three borders each

With the final, and lighter border added to each central block I realised it needed more to retain the balance my eye craves.

4 blocks with three borders, now with the blocks all sewn together

And so with a quick dig through my stash I found a batik in a colour way that was pleasing to my eye.

With the addition of an L shaped border on the top and right hand side in a fabric similar in tone to the border on the opposite side

It looks so much better doesn’t it? And the eye is tricked into thinking there’s the same number of borders around the blocks, but when you look more closely, you’l see there isn’t.

I added a final border using the old curtains which I loved but have no use for now, and set about quilting this latest quilt top, reverting to my preferred straight line quilting and getting much braver with this opting not to use the tape markers again.

Quilting finished, with the batting still not trimmed

With the scrappy binding added, it was done - and its name of Marmalade Love feels right, and works on many levels for me.

The top of the finished quilt, complete with scrappy fabric binding

The right hand side of the quilt is folded over on itself to show the backing fabric, which matches the final border around the whole quilt on the front

Even on the back!

So that’s the eleventh quilt done, and I’ve already made the central blocks for the next one - but more on that next month, though pop back tomorrow to see how I got on with making my own block for my Mystery Block of the Month Quilt.

You can see my other quilts which I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets, including those that are part of this ‘stretch’ project in earlier posts. I’m aiming to publish an update on my progress in the last week of each month for the remainder of 2025.