The Liberty Connection

I’m back to sharing more special moments from my trip to the United Kingdom. But, before I jump into that, I simply have to share a photo I just took of an Autumn conundrum. It’s been a very wierd Summer weather-wise, so much rain early with a dry and hot September. Yesterday I was admiring my lovely burning bush, when I noticed that one of our lilac bushes was blooming! This is a photo of beautiful flora you don’t often see together in nature.

Oh my – did I enjoy the fragrance!

Now on to this week’s post. It is very “freeing” because it’s about “Liberty” (bad joke – sorry about that 🤣).

Most quilters have heard of the Liberty store in London ~ and about their amazingly beautiful fabrics. Many of us on the trip were on a mission to find some. It all started at the vendor mall in the Festival of Quilts. A number of booths had Liberty fabric for sale, but the booth that intrigued me most was the actual Liberty booth.

They weren’t selling their fabrics there, but instead were asking attendees to share their Liberty story! Well, if you’ve been reading my blog for the past few months you know ~ I do have a Liberty story. Click here to read the beginnings of my story in a post from July 7th. So… with my Liberty tote over my shoulder, I sat down to write an “English Paper Piece” for their wall.

and pin it with the others:

After sharing it with the woman in the booth, she offered to take a photograph for my blog.

What a fun continuation of that story. Now you might be asking yourself “did she get any new Liberty fabric to replace the previous?” And you won’t be surprised that the answer is “yes”. But I waited until we were in London at their beautiful original store. So fast forward through Wales to our last day of the trip and our bus tour of London. We ended the tour here:

The 4 story atrium is beautiful.

And after climbing a few flights of stairs we reached the floor we were looking for.

Fabric! Across the way I saw Kay and Susan making their selections.

After a bit of petting I made my choices, and had the pieces cut by Emma ~ who was a joy.

We were a bit early for Christmas, but I enjoyed looking through the beginnings of their Christmas display with Kathy.

This inspired me to get a piece of Liberty Christmas fabric too.

Once our shopping was complete a few of us headed down to Picadilly Circus for tea and pastries, and then I made everyone pose for a very touristy photo of our last day in the UK.

Don’t miss the purple bags peeking out from amongst our treasures that declare we had a great day!

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And one more thing. Recently Sue asked a question about patterns in the UK:

“When you buy patterns in Great Britain are they metric instructions?  If so, how do you convert them to imperial measurements”.

I must admit I don’t know. I’m assuming the answer is yes. I looked through the only pattern I purchased and it was for an artsy fabric bowl which contained no measurements. Does anyone have an answer for Sue?