MENOPAUSE MAKES with Jenni Smith & Kay Walsh

My guests for this episode are a pair of friends who met at a tap dancing class and went on to become creative business partners. They have been sewing for more than 30 years, many of which were spent working together in their sewing studio in Ilkley in Yorkshire.

Since Covid, their classes in sewing and quilting have gone from in person, on a local level, to online and a world-wide audience. They say their mission is to empower women through sewing, one stitch at a time.

Their latest project, the book, Menopause Makes was borne out of many conversations between the friends about the Menopause. They had previously written a book together and decided that as it was a topic of conversation they regularly spoke about, surely many other women were doing the same, so why not write about it in a sewing context.

Along with a foreword by Dr Hannah Davies, a doctor specialising in menopause and lifestyle medicine, the book contains 10 patterns, one for each of ten different menopause symptoms. There is a sleep mask to aid insomnia, a basket for lost things to help with memory loss and keep cool quilt for night sweats.

As well as running classes, both online and in person, Jenni & Kay have travelled abroad to meet crafters from overseas, tell their stories and learn about their traditional crafts and techniques producing crafty travelogues as part of their online courses. Among their creative destinations have been Ireland, the Netherlands and Hawaii along with locations closer to their homes in Yorkshire, like Scotland and Northumberland.

For the full show notes for this episode, please visit the Making Stitches Podcast website. 

To join the mailing list for the Making Stitches Newsletter, please click onto this link.

The theme music is Make You Smile by RGMusic from Melody Loops .

The Making Stitches logo was designed by Neil Warburton at iamunknown.

You can support Making Stitches Podcast with running costs through Ko-fi.
Making Stitches  Podcast is supported by the Making Stitches Shop which offers Making Stitches Podcast merchandise for sale as well as Up the Garden Path crochet patterns created by me & illustrated by Emma Jackson.

Making Stitches Podcast is presented, recorded and edited by Lindsay Weston.