Last Friday I took train to London and met up with the delightful Elizabeth from Occasional Piece Quilt, who was visiting from California. We’ve been blogland friends for years so it was lovely to spend some time with her in real life and, where better to meet than a shop constructed from the timbers of two ancient battle ships and world famous (amongst other wares) for it’s iconic print fabrics?

Described by Oscar Wilde as ‘the chosen resort of the artistic shopper’, Liberty does not disappoint. The 1920s Tudor revival building, with its endless bespoke, handcrafted detail is a wonder and it is filled with goods discerningly selected and exquisitely displayed.

Their website says:

When our adventurous founder Arthur Lasenby Liberty laid plans for a London emporium laden with luxuries and fabrics from distant lands, his dream was to metaphorically dock a ship in the city streets. Liberty – Our Heritage.

And a century on, I felt that dream is still being realised and I had more the sense of visiting a museum or gallery than a shop.

After that, we visited a fabric/haberdashery shop Elizabeth had discovered called MacCulloch and Wallis Ltd. In their own Words:

Our range of fabrics is enormous! Where it still exists we stock the same interlinings we still have in catalogues dating back to the 1930s. Sometimes we have had to search long and hard over land and sea to track things down but we have been largely successful. We have an unrivalled range of interlinings and interfacings both woven and non-woven starting with book muslin right through to recycled cashmere wadding. We have silks from Italy, wools from Yorkshire, lace from France, prints from Japan and an-ever changing range of Italian deadstock fabrics quite literally as far up to the ceiling as we can reach. We are particularly proud to have what appears to be the only green baize available in London.

And that’s not the half of it! An entire wall of threads, racks of trimmings, little yarn-shelf sheep…

Perhaps surprisingly, since I constantly lament having to buy fabric online, the sum total of my purchases was these tiny ric rac trimmings so, once I’m up-to-date with sewing projects, perhaps I’ll have to go back!

In the meantime, I was reminded of my own little vintage haberdashery/apothecary/florist, inspired by the buildings I saw when I went to Chester…

That was four years ago and I actually did a lot of work on the inside but I found the windows weren’t level and I wasn’t confident sawing it myself. One of my sons kindly did it for me but, by then, I’d lost momentum and I ended up leaving it unfinished gathering dust.

So I dusted it all and decided it was high time I sorted it out but now I realise there are issues with its next door shop front. It has three upstairs windows that don’t line up with each other or with the downstairs! If I had noticed sooner should really have sent it back but I think I have a plan. In the meantime, here is the inside before the dust comes back :)

I will have to find somewhere in the little sewing shop to display some of the mini ric rac as a reminder of my wonderful Grand Day Out with Elizabeth, marvelling at the spectacle, the fabrics, the notions (the prices!) and talking ten to the dozen, setting the world to rights…

And I should also take as a reminder the words under the clock on the Liberty Building –

No minute gone comes ever back again, take heed and see ye nothing do in vain.

Happy Sewing or whatever you are doing :)

Janine @ Rainbow Hare

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