I like books! I collect books – all sorts of books, not just quilting books. I probably have more gardening books than quilting ones and if you add in the books about plants in general then I have way too many (is there such a thing as ‘too many books’?). I also have magazines. In recent years space has run out so I have been giving the magazines away to a friend who sells them to raise money for Young Quilters, but I still have a lot left. I also have gardening magazines – this time not quite as many as quilting magazines as I have been a bit more rigorous in culling them; they go to a local charity shop as and when I can bear to part company with them.

(Oh! Seeing this photo – so much larger than on the phone – makes me realise just how many gardening and natural history books I have and this is only one and half of the five bookshelves.The books from the gaps on the shelves are next to my chair as I plan a new border for later in the year.)

This next photo is my (main) collection of patchwork and quilting books –

and is also overflowing. There are more books balanced on the top too and a fifth shelf at the bottom.

I know we now have the marvellous thing that the internet has become but nothing quite beats sitting down with a book or magazine and leafing through , probably not looking for anything in particular, just hoping inspiration will strike via serendipity – something the web doesn’t do quite so well. I find it helpful to have a book to hand when I’m tackling a new technique – it doesn’t switch itself off just as you get to a critical bit like the tablet does! I can put notes inside a book to remind me of other places to look or as a reminder of the tricky bit that isn’t explained so well and how I managed it. Something else you can’t do with a tablet or a computer (or not quite so easily). I also keep files – in the filing cabinet and in box files – of worksheets, Young Quilter magazines, notes from books and magazines that I’ve borrowed over the years and other snippets that ‘may be useful one day’. And on the shelf that used to be above the computer until I moved things around are some of those files and the best of my reference books; plus a few others that didn’t fit on the other shelves!

Some of my books and magazines have been on the shelf for a great many years, others are more recent purchases. Some are indispensable, others I wonder what I was thinking, but I keep them anyway (in case I remember what I was thinking?).

At one time I had every issue of Patchwork and Quilting magazine from the first one but those early ones have been given away. I had a full set of Popular Patchwork too, and of the American magazine Traditional Quiltworks. Once upon a time the National Patchwork Championships had a magazine (the National Patchworker?) and I had a collection of those as well, but, again, they have gone. Now I have an adult daughter who travels for work so I get brought (or sent) magazines from all over the place – when she has managed to find time between meetings to search out likely shops. These get loaned out to various friends, eventually finding their way home to me to be filed or passed on permanently.This next photo is just one copy from each of the titles that are currently on the shelves somewhere (there are others around the house – on the table, under the chairs, next to the bed . . . ) –

Where is all this rambling leading? I thought I might pull a book or two off my shelves every month and have a look through, let you know why I have it (if I can remember), whether it is still available and if it is/was worth buying. I might also look at older books and magazines and compare them with newer ones to see the difference in information and how it is presented. Or not . . . .?!

Oh – and I will restrict myself to P&Q books and leave all the others on the shelves; unless there is inspiration to be found in them because you never know, it can be found in the most unlikely of places.

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