Showing posts with label Liberty of London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberty of London. Show all posts

Monday, 19 July 2010

Useful gifts

I made a couple of things for Chic Girl...
A stuffed button heart covered with vintage mother-of-pearl buttons from both of her Grandmothers  button boxes:

 
An oversized pencil case made with some of the Liberty fabric I was given on Mothers day
here is the bee fabric lining:
A large make -up bag, with a fish themed lining:


and finally, a passport cover:

Wednesday, 21 April 2010

Birthday weekend (2)

Sorry folks, that was a long time coming and I'm not especially sure it will be worth the wait either!
Here are lots more photos:
Cafe Uno - The whole building was covered in tiles with an Egyptian theme:
Cycling skeleton in Libertys pharmacy - a comment on models these days perhaps?



 










Himself had booked tickets for 'The Infidel' with  Omid Djalili (bloke from the MoneySupermarket.com ads), Richard Schiff (Toby in The West Wing) and Matt Lucas playing a Rabbi at the Empire Leicester Square cinema - somewhere we used to (easily and quickly) drive to and park just around the corner, on the street, for free, before we were married - We would  nip into 'town' for the Saturday midnight movie - the seats reclined and it was rather nice after the then somewhat scruffy provincial Ealing or Wembley cinemas.
Considering the price of our tickets I would have expected more, true we were on the back row with plenty of leg room and true the seats still reclined, but since the seats in front also reclined, Himself and I had a couple who insisted on bouncing back and forth on their chair backs throughout the entire film - thus spoiling our comfort value by 99.9%, looking around other tall people suffered the same way. However the film was both enjoyable and funny, just a shame about the cinema seats.
Inside Libertys (Oh how I love this shop):
We went to the V&A as we had tickets for the Quilt show. Sadly no photos allowed, so I've scanned in some of the postcards I bought afterwards, (experience has taught me that to buy the accompanying book is pointless as I so rarely look at it again!) I enjoyed the exhibition much more than I thought I would. The old quilts really did steal the show and the opportunity to see them up close was great. The 'Changi quilt' bought a lump to my throat and I felt for the 'convict' women stitching the 'Rajah quilt' on the ship to Australia (sorry no postcards of those) I agree with many other quilters views in that I too think the curators missed a trick with the choice contemporary quilts. What a shame they didn't choose quilts from the many fine quilters we have in this country. I gave most of them no more than a passing glance - I thought it was sad that they chose to exhibit modern work by a group of prisoners from Wandsworth and yet the work by so many ordinary (and extraordinary) women was completly ignored.  One of the few contemporary quilts I liked (and stupidly I didn't note down who made it,) was made of 38,000 x 1cm squares of plain newspaper, to represent the number of civilians and 100 x 1cm square photos to represent military personell who had died (up to that point in time) in the Iraqi war. I found it very moving.

I'm sure I've either seen this quilt before or something similar to this idea before....... Liberty Jack by Janey Forgan:

Small Cot quilt - Welsh wool -1860's Red diamonds in the centre are satin and the hearts are a fine knitted fabric, they may have once been stockings.
Patchwork by Elisabeth Chapman - 1829. Unfinished, all the tacking threads and paper backings were still in place - we were allowed to see portions of the back showing the papers, many with beautiful copperplate writing.

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Mothers day fabric

I was sent a lovely gift for Mothers day, these beautiful fabrics from the V&A quilt collection:
Chic Girl has dropped some heavy hints about how she would love something made from the brown and blue shell fabric:
If I had to pick one, this is my favourite:
But these two are extremely pretty too:
I will have to think carefully what to make with them - the quality is fabulous, so soft and yet with a good, high thread count. It is a lovely gift and I didn't even know the fabric existed.
I also received some gorgeous lilies and pale lime chrysanthemums:
I'm currently doing a little stitchery on some more of the pale duck egg linen, for a couple of 18" cushions. First I mark the design out, using a light box and a washable pen:
Then I just sit down and stitch:This design is quite large and it seems to be taking a few days to finish. I then have another matching cushion to stitch.

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

Sister Act and Liberty's of London....

Saturday was a fun day - we drove to Ruislip to have lunch with our favourite Rellies - not just lunch it turns out, but sherry and nibbles and then a three course meal with wine - I could have done with an afternoon snooze, which was unfortunate as along with The Rellies oldest Daughter, The Willowy Dr., her partner B and his two delightful offspring A & H, we were off to the underground to catch the tube to Oxford Circus where we had to dash to get to the London Palladium in time to see the matinee performance of Sister Act. Great show it was too, all the actors were fantastic. So good to see Ian Lavender as the priest and Sheila Hancock as the Mother Superior. The stage mechanics were just amazing, with various bits of the stage floor moving around in ever decreasing circles. I took this photo as the show ended. It shows the stained glass windows and the statue of the Viurgin Mary that got bigger and shinier as the show progressed. Here is a shot of the rather intricate ceiling:When the show finished we came out of the theatre and saw Liberty's immediately to our left, but as we only had ten minutes before it closed it was always going to be a struggle to actually do any shopping there. Well, what do you know, 6pm came and went and no one threw us out, so we carried on looking. This is the beautiful entrance, it would have been so easy to have bought up armfuls of flowers I picked up a beautiful silk scarf in the sale and hastily put it down again even though it was reduced to a mere £275! I was so shocked I didn't even register what the full price was. The fabric and habby is on the third floor and it's astonishing how fast one can sprint up stairs when the clock is against one! Hmmm, much reduced in size from last time I was in here, but I had heard as much from others so it didn't come as a total surprise. But there still seemed plenty to look at. I drooled over a few shelves of fabrics, but was not tempted enough to buy, I needed more time to choose. To me, the braids and trims were more interesting at this point. I would like to have spent longer looking but will save it for another day when it's just Himself and me. I did buy some stripey braid that will probably form part of a bag. So hardly a big spender, but if I'd had more time, dear reader...............They still hadn't called time when we left the shop at nearly 6.30, so goodness knows what happened to closing time on that particular day. We briefly glimpsed at Carnaby Street, but that did all seem to be closing, so with reluctance we turned away and headed back to the tube. Where a huge supper awaited our return - we chatted to our Rellies way into the eveing and finally got home at 1.45am on Sunday morning!