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| My first day of school, 1977 |
My name is Jo and I love to make things 😊
is my business name, created from my own name and initials and also from J-KI-JO - a childhood nickname from my dad.
My Grandmothers were both makers. My nan made beautiful teddies and dolls. Grandma, who had been widowed with two young daughters, made whatever needed to be made. She made beautiful clothes. I spent many hours with her unravelling old jumpers and rolling up the yarn. Grandma’s sister, Aunty Mary, was also a maker. She was very active in the CWA and was always making items to sell at their stalls. My mum creates beautifully knitted clothes – she taught me to knit, but I’m not very good at it! She’s taught me so much I could never put it into words. She’s my mum, that’s what mum’s do!
I
can’t leave out the men in my family.
My
Grandfather, Dandy, taught me to find the perfect stick to whittle into a thumb
stick. We even built a scarecrow together! Dandy was an amazing gardener and had
gardens full of food and flowers. He had a shed that I explored thoroughly while I was visiting them in England when I was 7. I have a scar on my thumb from "not touching" the axe in his shed!
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| A photo from Dad's shed. The top pic is of Dad in his ship engineer days. The bottom pic is of me, aged 7, in Dandy's shed in England. |
And
then there’s Dad, the prolific maker, the engineer. Need something? Just make
it. As a kid, I loved hanging out in his shed, hammering and sawing stuff. If I
needed help making something, he would always find a solution.
Anyway, back to me…
Being raised with a ‘waste not, want not’ point of view, making things out of unwanted items just seemed to make sense to me.
Making
things became a major part of my life when I became a mother in 1991.
I started with cross stitching, then Grandma bought me a sewing machine, and I taught myself to sew.
The 90’s saw me create a huge amount of clothing for
myself and my daughter.
A
visit to Aunty mary included her teaching me the basics of crochet.
For 5 years I ran a childcare service from my home, so there was lots of
craft happening!
It
was also around this time that a trip to the post office saw me purchase a paper
recycling kit and learn how to make my own paper.
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The
2000’s - Life gets busy, I’m moving around a lot, but I’m still making stuff..
still sewing, cross stitching, making paper, collecting bits and pieces.
I
start making beaded jewellery. Mozaic enters my life and I start by reusing photo
frames and smashing crockery to create mosaic designs.
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| One of my original mozaics, still hanging on Dad's shed. |
2005
& 2006 bring me two more daughters and life gets hectic… not a lot of
making happening towards the end of the decade.
We’re
living in Queensland at this point. The end of 2010 brings rain, and more rain,
and then more rain. January 2011, the floods hit.
A friend, who was pregnant at the time, and her children - evacuated their flooded home and stayed with us. During this time, I picked up my crochet hook and added a border to a blanket for my friend’s baby. And so my crochet journey began…
Shortly after the floods we relocated to Sydney. Here I found shops with walls of cotton crochet
yarn, an amazing fabric shop and many op shops – all right around the corner
from home!!
The making came to life – beads, paper, mozaics, sewing – it was all happening, but it was crochet that had my attention.
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| One of my very first projects was this cushion for my Mum. I spent three months making it and thanks to youtube I learnt to make roses, butterflies and leaves. |
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| Custom metallic unicorns |
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| Custom bunny order |
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| My own chilli design |
Making my own yarn soon became an idea to work with and I found myself cutting plastic bags and T shirts into strips for crocheting..
Recent
years have seen me add making polymer clay beads and creating jewellery with
them to my list of stuff I make. I know there’s been many other things, too many to list… I’m always
making something out of something!
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| My new friends! |
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