That’s Janine and I, up there under the Liberty Arch.
Apparently all roads lead to Liberty of London if you are traveling to England. Janine, of Rainbow Hare, has also written about meeting up a stranger (that’s me!) from the US in the great city on the Thames, and has a wonderful overview of that store. She called her blog post A Grand Day Out, and it was!
I learned from Janine’s blog that it has the idea of a ship at its origins, and I can see it in the timbered and half-timbered exterior (from a ship!) and interior:
I didn’t quite figure out the floor plan, but basically there are central atriums and so many beautiful goods for sale.
These are from the first central atrium we entered. That giant rose with all its petals made me wonder how they crafted it. Magic, I think.
Another atrium. They don’t just sell Tana Lawn or fabric, but being quilters, Janine and I made a beeline for that section, with one quick stop on the fourth floor to see the (new) Christmas displays).
Eyeball ornament?
And…eyeball tree. Must have been some current bit of culture I missed out on.
Love seeing their golden ship weathervane through the skylight. [Truth: Janine spotted it first. It is totally the best to go to a store with a fellow blogger. They see things you don’t, and visa versa, and we “see” so much more!] Okay, time to go down one flight of stairs (we were always looking for the stairs) to the fabric floor.
I saw some of this, too, in Paris, where they drape the mannequins in yardage and ruffles to show you a dress in their exquisite fabrics.
We were moving so fast, I didn’t get a chance to read about this display of giant scissors.
With the open atriums you can see all the festive Christmas lights. It would be so fun to be in London at Christmas. (next trip, haha)
Knowing I would be overwhelmed by it all, before I left home, I did some “pre-shopping,” browsing their website and choosing one print of Tana Lawn — only one — to purchase. I showed the young man (with the fabulous brooch on his shoulder) my photo of what I wanted, and he took me right to the yardage. One meter, please.
It’s for a secret project later on this year, so here’s the slightly disguised view. We also combed through their boxes of “scraps” or remnants, and I picked up a lovely floral clip-dot:
I learned about this way back in the day when I took my textiles classes in college. We know it now as “dotted swiss” but that fabric really that is little dots of glue and bits of fluff.
Above is the “true” dotted swiss: a long thread is carried during the weaving and then clipped short to create those little dots. Then it is printed afterwards, which is why some dots are blue or red or green. This is one of the beauties of Liberty: you can find the traditional fabrics.
While we were looking for stairs, we ran into a few other interesting Liberty tidbits:
What your fabrics are made from: spools of yarns.
The “Sole Spa” for “fabulous hands, feet, and legs.”
No(se) comment.
Stained glass in one of the stairwells.
And then out! We grabbed some lunch at Pret (which used to be called Pret A Manger) then walked over to MacCulloch & Wallis Ltd, another sewing store.
What is haberdashery? In America, we’ve adapted it to mean mens’ clothing, but the original meaning, from Chaucerian times:
“a haberdasher is a business or person who sells fabric and small articles for sewing, dressmaking and knitting, such as buttons, ribbons and zips” (from here)
Here’s some haberdashery eye candy, for those of us in the States still mourning the loss of the JoAnn’s stores:
Yes, I bought buttons. And some elastic to replace some in my half-slip that had worn out, which led Janine to take me to Marks and Spencer Department Store next to find a “half-petticoat.” A great adventure! And why did we ever change out the word petticoat for “slip”? Or the word “haberdashery” to “notions”? We really have to reclaim these words!
Some London sights.
After a restorative beverage at McDonalds (no judging, it was right next door), she took off to the train station to head back to her lovely English countryside. But she left me a great present in the form of a magic wand:
I put it in my scissors-and-pens container when I got home; when I sew on my machine, I can hear the little bells jingle. A treasure, from the hands of Janine.
When we were at MacCulloch & Wallis Ltd, we each got a tote bag with our purchase. Which leads me to confess I have a true love of tote bags. And Scotland and London feed that habit as they are Very Serious about no plastic bags. Maybe if we here in America had all these cute bags, we’d get rid of our plastic bags, too (except for special necessary occasions). Here’s most of the bags I toted home:
Topping & Company was the beautiful bookshop right around the corner from our flat in Edinburgh
Detour Story:
When I was chatting with the clerk at Topping and Co. bookstore, telling him how much I enjoyed being in his shop, I mentioned that it was not like our bookshops at home. He asked me what they were like. And I said well, most of the things in the bookstores are not books. He then said the owner made a calculated decision to not even let pens be sold in the store because if pens come in, then you have to have journals and if you have journals, you have to have stationary, and so on. The whole place is just gloriously filled with books, along with a couple of racks of greeting cards, but that’s it.
Scottish Parliament Building (another tote). The deal in that gift shop is this: you can buy a paper bag for £1. Or you can buy a cloth tote bag for £2. That’s a no-brainer to someone who loves textiles.
National Gallery of Art (London) Some of the art is posted here.
The Royal Yacht Brittania, Queen Elizabeth’s decommissioned yacht, AKA Corgi City. I carried this bag around after that, but turned inside out so it wasn’t sooooo obvious I was a tourist.
National Galleries of Scotland (there are actually four of these linked museums, but they all share the same style of tote bag). Here’s a post about the tiled floors in the National Museum of Scotland. Above is the inner atrium of the National Portrait Gallery.
Holyroodhouse Palace. I was there on the “special day.” If I coughed up a bunch more £-notes, I could see the Queen’s Royal Apartments. I met some a mother and daughter who’d come up from Essex just to tour these rooms. I asked them “Do we like Camilla now?” Oh, yes, was the reply. “And how about your most recent returning royal, Prince Harry and his wife?” The two women looked at each other and shook their heads, saying something about how they need to keep their heads down and be proper royals. And in true British fashion, both of these women’s middle names were Elizabeth.
Last photo from London, in the Heathrow airport. I never did ride on the Elizabeth underground.
Next trip!
Bonus Tote Bags:
Backside of the National Gallery in London bag. Somewhere in the millions of title cards I read while going through museums, there was a line about what will we do when we don’t have museums to learn from? I loved that they were teaching me even on a tote bag.
As fellow lovers-of-cloth, you will understand when I tell you that I grabbed this from the tray in the hallway with someone’s garbage from their take-out dinner. I dumped out their cartons (neatly) and took it back to our hotel room. This heroic rescue made us just late enough that we had to run to catch our bus. #worthit
