Woodworking for Women

Patt Gregory outside her home in Mullumbimby

All over the world there are women working away in workshops producing fine, professional pieces of furniture and decorative items. Nevertheless, they often feel a bit conspicuous in the timberyard and the hardware store. It seems a bit silly in this day and age, but it's true. Patt Gregory had spent much of her working life helping women arm themselves with the knowledge and skill to navigate their way through the timber racks and tool aisles.

You will find Patt Gregory and her students working away in her workshop just outside Mullumbimby, behind a post-war brick veneer house opposite lush green fields and rolling hills. Patt has been quietly giving her classes here for over ten years and has inspired hundreds of women to pick up tools, learn woodworking skills and create their own projects. Originally from Perth, she was always drawn to wood and tools as a child, but as was the experience of many girls at the time, there was little encouragement for her to learn how to use them. Patt describes in the introduction to her book "Woodwork for Women", how at the age of five after borrowing her stepfather's hammer from his shed:

"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 then pushed and pulled the less than enthusiastic farm dog up onto the wobbly boards I'd wedged in place and together we looked out over the paddocks. 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".

The fascination never went away, and after attending some hobby woodworking classes for women, Patt was convinced she wanted to learn carpentry and joinery and set out on a path to learn the skills she needed. At this time she was living in the UK having fallen in love with it during a visit in the 1970s. After marrying a local man, she enrolled in an intensive carpentry and Joinery course in Bristol and found herself in a class with 26 men. Being softly spoken and of very slight build she was faced with a good deal of skepticism over her abilities. Nevertheless, despite the frustrations and prejudice the course was a cathartic experience.

The satisfying feeling of sharp tools working and shaping the wood and the smell of the sawdust hovering in the air was entirely seductive and Patt was hooked for life. Although the course in Bristol was about carpentry and joinery, she became fascinated by how differently she learned the technical elements of the course to her fellow male students. She found it was necessary for her tutors to "state the obvious", because she didn't have the basic knowledge of tools and the understanding of terminology that her fellow male students had, due to the fact they had been schooled since they were children. The presence of this basic knowledge was taken for granted by her tutors. It was the awareness of the inequities in technical education that compelled her to develop a system suited to teaching woodworking to women in an environment that wasn't intended to alienate them and make them feel foolish and excluded, but to build their confidence and belief in their own ability. She felt it important that the students felt supported to ask the most basic of questions without any element of ridicule. A system that should be available to both genders.

In 1985 Patt helped set up a government-funded Women's Workshop in Bath UK. She began teaching woodwork to unemployed women over the age of 25. It was enormously rewarding to see her students move into the workforce and become employed either as teachers themselves or craftspeople able to earn a living.

Patt moved home to Australia and in 1993 moved to Mullumbimby with her family. It was here that she developed her own woodworking school. Although the school is called "Woodwork for Women", she is adamant that it not be exclusive and stresses that anyone is welcome in her classes. "Woodwork is a vehicle for transformation, anyone can do it", she says. The atmosphere in the workshop is very friendly and approachable. After coffee and homemade muffins, we walk around looking at some of the work being produced by the students. Clearly passionate about woodworking and helping women to gain confidence in their abilities, Patt explains that her method of teaching can seem a bit illogical to some people, but this is quite deliberate and although her courses may not follow the conventional route, 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.

Patt doesn't believe in doing endless sample joints until you have acquired the skills to create the perfect joint, she believe this can be demoralising and boring, her students begin immediately on their actual project, and as they gain more confidence, they begin to work on its more prominent features. The courses are designed for beginners right through to advanced classes. The information in the courses isn't compromised or "dumbed down", the students learn correct joinery and construction techniques such as mortise and tenon, dovetailing and rebate joints.

	Patt Gregory inside her workshop

You realise as you talk to Patt, despite her unquestionable credentials as a woodworker, that for her, it is all about the women she teaches. The joy she gets from watching them gain the confidence in the workshop is obvious.
One thing you may not get in a lot of woodworking classes (apart from the homemade muffins) is the encouragement for some self-awareness as you acquire new skills. Patt makes her students aware of the more destructive side of perfectionism that can lead to frustration and an erosion of the enjoyment of woodworking. Patt encourages a desire to achieve excellence in her students through practice and an acknowledgement of what they have achieved and their enjoyment in it.

The future looks bright, Patt and some of her students will be demonstrating for the first time at the "Timber and Working With Wood" shows this year. Whilst there, she hopes to debut her book in which she takes the reader through the making of a project, applying the techniques she uses in her classes. It's much more than just a "How To" book , as it features some lovely anecdotes from her and her students about their journey into woodwork and life.

Patt's story is a great lesson in how when you set out to achieve something, what you end up with is not always what you expect. Patt Gregory thought she wanted to make things in wood, but she discovered she really wanted to offer other people the opportunity for growth through the acquisition of practical skills and a new way of looking at things. For some of her students, this has even lead to a whole new career.

Patt inside her workshop	View from the workshop
Some of Patt's students working