About Gaynor
Gaynor is a crochet-obsessed teacher and pattern designer from Wokingham in Berkshire.
She learned to knit and crochet as a child, trained and worked as a French teacher for over 10 years, and then picked up her hook again 10 years ago. Gaynor jokes that she is “lucky enough to call myself a full-time hooker…”
In 2012, Gaynor set up The Barkham Hookers crochet group with a few friends in her living room. They now run 4 group sessions a week as well as many regular private lessons with over 600 members on Facebook alone. You can find them on Facbook via The Barkham Hookers’ Charity Group, where many of their charity projects can be seen.
She is very proud of the fact that The Barkham Hookers raised over £60,000 for various national and international charities, £52,000 of that for the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal. Click here to watch Gaynor share a quick and easy method for crocheting a poppy.
Gaynor loves designing and making blankets, many of which can be found as free CALs (crochet-a-longs) on her blog: Confessions of a Barkham Hooker. During the pandemic, she designed the Coronavirus CAL, posting a new section daily then weekly with colourful pictures and detailed notes.
Signature Technique
Crochet Blankets incorporating a variety of patterns and colours
Top Tips
- Crochet is very forgiving. Don’t be afraid to adjust or change the pattern to suit your needs or likes. And remember, if in doubt pull it out!
- Use a larger hook to work a long foundation chain to avoid it curling up.
- If you work quite loosely choose a slightly smaller hook than advised and a larger hook if you work tightly.
- When working in rows do not forget to work into the last stitch – – which is probably the chain 2/3 made at the start of the previous row.
- Use military buttons as the centre in poppies to add something special.
- If you are working with several balls of yarn, chuck them on the floor and let gravity help you keep them untangled.
Videos
Patterns
Posts
when do you add the wadding?
Question: Hi I'm a new quilter making 12" squares. At which point do I add batting? Is it with the individual square or when it's all joined together ? Answer: There are two ways of doing a quilt - by squares - Quilt as you Go (see Carolyn Forster) or making the whole quilt top - which is my preferred method - see Layer Quilt and Bind in the Block of the Month series First Sampler Quilt
Where can you buy an extension table for your machine?
Sometimes sewing machines come with small extension/quilting tables; Velerie's Bernina 1130 did and if you have a Janome with a quilting package then they will too. The table is very useful for keeping the fabric flat and particularly useful when machine quilting. If you don't have one then The Cotton Patch have an efficient and cost effective relationship with a US manufacturer to provide extension tables (in a mixture of sizes) for most machines - older and new. You can contact them at www.cottonpatch.co.uk/?
Update 21st March 2014
Sewing for pleasure is exactly what Valerie and Jennie love [...]