‘When I was five I snuck into my stepfather’s shed and borrowed his hammer. I spent a few hours wandering around our dairy farm trying to whack four-inch nails into the shed door, the laundry window frame and the concrete foundations.

‘I wanted to build a tree house so I dragged planks of wood up into the wide flowering branches of our wattle tree and tried to nail them to the branches. I suspect that if I had been a boy, I would have been shown how to hold the hammer the right way and I would have been told that four-inch nails have rather limited uses. Instead, when my stepfather discovered I had his hammer, I was sent inside to help Mum with bottling the blackberry jam. It would be another twenty seven years before I would pick up a hammer again.’

This is the beginning of the introduction to Patt Gregory’s new book/manual Woodwork for Women – Cutting a New Path for Beginners, which will be launched at the Byron Bay Writers Festival on August 8.

Patt says she fell totally in love with wood when she joined an evening woodwork class for women in Bristol, UK, in 1984 and in pursuit of her passion, trained full time as a carpenter/joiner, learning everything from stair casing to roofing and joinery such as dovetail joints in cabinetmaking.

‘Although the course was about carpentry and joinery, I became aware of how differently I learned the technical elements of the course to my fellow male students. I found it was necessary for my tutors to “state the obvious” because I didn’t have the basic understanding of tool handling and the nuances of woodwork that the other students seemed to have.’

Women’s workshops
In 1985 she helped set up a government funded Women’s Workshop in Bath, UK, and with a group of women began teaching woodwork to unemployed women over 25 years of age. In 1998 Patt started teaching woodwork to women (and men and children) from her home in Mullumbimby and several hundred have passed through her classes.

‘It was the awareness of inequities in technical education that encouraged me to develop a system suited to teaching woodworking to women in an environment of fun, non competitiveness with an emphasis on developing confidence. I designed courses using an holistic approach using mind and body to teach tool handling and the fundamentals of furniture making. My teachings may not follow the conventional route, but the students arrive at the end point having gained an understanding of how and why the project is constructed the way it is and how to properly and safely use the tools. I believe that doing endless sample joints until you have acquired the skills to create the perfect joint isn’t necessary, so we begin immediately on the actual project.’

Patt’s teaching is mainly devoted to beginners classes, getting women off to a confident start, supporting them with skills and the knowledge of tools so that they can work effectively, to design and make the furniture they want. 
‘Learning woodwork can have an amazing effect on people’s lives,’ says Patt. ‘The confidence seems to spill over into other areas of their lives.’
Writing the beginners course and putting it in a book seemed the next step to reaching a wider audience.

See more at www.woodworkforwomen.com.au.