The Return of the Blogroll, Plus a Trip to Reading

Thanks so much for all your blog recommendations the other day - it's been great to have some new blogs to check out on my tea breaks.

I used to subscribe to a lot of different blogs via Google Reader, then I found the list of unread posts got really overwhelming so I started unsubscribing to a lot of them... until when Google Reader went away earlier this year I only had a few blogs left on my list. I was following a lot of the bloggers on Twitter or Facebook anyway so I thought, why bother finding a new Reader?

But actually although I don't miss the feeling that I need to "catch up" with all the unread posts that build up when I'm busy doing other things, I do miss having a big list of stuff to read when I'm in the mood for a bit of craft / design / pretty picture inspiration. So I'm going old school and have added a blogroll to the sidebar of my blog (down on the bottom left). It's very much a work in progress - I keep remembering blogs I love that I've not included in the list, and I'm bound to discover lots of new-to-me blogs I want to add to the list. It'll be great for me to have a list I can dip into when the mood takes me, and I hope it'll help you guys discover some new favourites too.

In other news... for last week's Nice Day Out I spent the day in Reading. I pretty much grew up in Reading (I went to school there for 8 years) so this wasn't the most adventurous of days out, but it was nice to visit with a tourist-y eye instead of just working my way round the shops which is the usual reason I visit these days... well, that or to get the train to somewhere else! (When we had to describe where we lived for our French & German GCSEs we all learned how to say "Reading is a town near London in the South of England. It has excellent transport links").

The weather was lovely so I went for a walk round town...

 

 ... then had lunch at Picnic and popped into Jacksons, an independent (and delightfully old fashioned) department store that's sadly closing at the end of this year.
 

 

Then I went to Reading Museum and visited a couple of my favourite exhibits - the Victorian replica of the Bayeux Tapestry and the Huntley & Palmers gallery which is all about the (now closed) local biscuit factory. I love looking at all the different tins, and the little films about biscuit production throughout the 20th Century are really interesting (you can see a couple of them here and here). The only "problem" is that you come away with a strong desire to eat (or bake and then eat) some tasty biscuits!

The Festival of Quilts 2013

I had a fun day out at The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham yesterday. I went to the festival for the first time a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it but I sadly couldn't go last year as without booking in advance the train fare was just too pricey (£60-£100 for a return from my new hometown depending on the route! Eek!). But this year I discovered that if I blagged a lift to a nearby station on a different line I could get a much more affordable ticket (just £28, hurrah!).

So, I got up early yesterday and headed for Birmingham. I met some lovely ladies who were getting the same train to the Festival which made for a very nice journey, despite a half hour wait for our connecting train :)

Then I met up with the lovely Lucie Summers & my fellow felt-obsessive Kirsty of LovePaperFish and spent the day nattering & looking at all the awesome quilty goodness (I also bumped into Charlotte at the station on the way home which was a nice surprise!).

I know next to nothing about quilting (though I am currently working on a very simple quilt that I started sewing way back when I was a student) but it's always nice to spend a day looking at pretty fabric and other crafty things. Here are a few of the quilts that caught my eye...

This quilt was so pretty, I love this mix of colours and shapes. There are a couple of great posts about the process of making of this quilt over at Little Island Quilting - HERE & HERE - with lots of yummy photos.

A fun "snail mail" -themed quilt:

Rows and rows of triangles:

 

Lots of butterflies! Did you know the collective noun for butterflies is a "kaleidoscope"? I think this quilt looks rather like a kaleidoscope:

 

A tree & a flock of birds:

A colourful dragonfly - I thought I'd leave this photo uncropped so you can see how some of the quilts were being displayed. 

A very detailed quilt made up of lots of small squares, each with a little illustration & a bit of text about what the maker did that day, like a little embroidered diary entry. I love this idea!

 

 

A cool quilt where the white stitching marks out a blueprint design:

 

Pretty quilted paper panels:

 

A fancy all-white quilt:

Lots of yummy greens - I love all these shades of green together & the organic feel of this design:

A collection of designs with a London-theme:

Cute mini quilts - a nautical quilt (love the tiny bunting!) by Jane Wheble and a quilt with pretty embroidered birds, by Judith Beevor:

 

 

It was also great to see the two quilts Lucie had on display. I love the colours & shapes in this one...

... and all those horizontal rows of stitching:

I'm really looking forward to Lucie's book, Quilt Improv, coming out next month!

Oh, and last but by no means least I was also delighted to see Kristy Daum's  fun Doctor Who "pixel" quilt on display:

 

I loved reading about the construction of this quilt (which is called "The Tenth") over on Kristy's blog this spring, it was great being able to see it "in real life" after admiring it (and all the work that went into it!) through the magic of the internet :)

All in all, a very nice day out! I haven't booked a day to "take the day off work to go look at interesting things" in my diary for ages and I really should do that more often.

(PS The Amazon link in this post is an affiliate link)