All Quilty Roads Lead to Liberty

September 27, 2026September 26, 2026 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

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

Something to Think About · Textiles & Fabric · Travels

When You Can’t Create You Can Work

June 1, 2025June 7, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Henry Miller, a writer in the early part of the 20th century, devised a list of rules for himself when writing his first book (Black Spring). I found this whole idea while zipping through an exhibit in Kraków, where a designer tried to incorporate pieces of his so-called Eleven Commandments. One of them, “When you can’t create you can work,” was printed on ribbons and strips of whatever. Of course this phrase caught my eye, and I paused a nano-second to snap a photo then moved on. Tourists! (Look at the end of the post for Miller’s complete list.)

So it’s been that kind of a week, still snowed under by jet lag, I didn’t feel up to creating not one quilty idea. But I could work.

Our weather has started to turn to the hot, dry summer kind of weather, which means that the seersucker that I stashed back in October was going to have to get cut up into my summer nightgowns, using the same pattern that I’ve been using for half my life.

I usually only make two at a time, but this time went for three. I scavenged ribbons, which necessitated digging deep into the garage (more on that, later). The laces bordering the woven ribbon (pink/blue) were picked up on a trip to Austria, a millennia ago. The woven ribbons were purchased when I working at a local fabric store before I had my first child, and when they had wonderful local fabric stores.

I’d given the Jemima Puddleduck buttons to my mother, which she gave back to me at some point. (Three for only one dollar??!!)

I found them in my button box, still wrapped in the tissue paper the shop lady in Britain had wrapped up for me. Before JoAnn’s closed, I would have felt guilty for stashing away all these treasures. Now I feel sort of proud of myself. We quilters are funny people.

Last time she was here, my daughter said, “Mom, you need to clean out.” Implied was the rest of the sentence: “Clean out before you die so I don’t have to.” Message received; rafters cleared. Working on the rest…later.

This standing quilt hoop was a heart breaker to leave at the thrift store. The boy taking this treasure from my husband turned it upside, and one side of the stand fell out onto the floor. He kicked it to the side and dumped the rest into the bin. (Perhaps it’s best if we don’t watch what happens to our treasures.)

Sick and tired of podcasts and newscasts, and realizing my stubborn jetlag was still with me — which answers the question about why it took me soooo long to make the nightgowns — I started listening to a new book, recommended by my sister. So far, so good. I will say that I have gotten things put away from the trip, but so much else needs to be dealt with, primarily the emails. Thank you for your lovely notes on the Kraków churches!

I could have used this Pasmanteria (the word for this kind of a store in Czechia) when I was hunting buttons and trim for the nightgowns. Yes, I found a fabric/notions store while traveling! I purchased the usual: two thimbles.

Alphonse Mucha window, St. Vitus Cathedral

I’ll leave you with this two glorious stained glass windows from the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, along with (below) this tiny wrought iron work of a woman spinning thread into cloth, from one of the chapel gates:

Happy Working, if not Creating–

Here are the ELEVEN COMMANDMENTS, if you are interested:

Work on one thing at a time until finished.
Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’
Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
When you can’t create you can work.
Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

This little PatternLite pattern is a reminder of what we see when we get out of our own town.

You can find it in my Quilt Shop, on PayHip. Enjoy!

Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Textiles & Fabric

This and That • May 2022

May 4, 2022September 11, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I so appreciate you all: thank you, thank you! I was able to pass on the info to WordPress, my blog software company, a reliable source for writing these past fifteen years and three months. Bugs climb in everywhere and I’m hoping they get this one resolved.

And thank you also for all the beautiful things you wrote. I treasured and read them all–often out loud to my husband. I have the best readers!

Usually I write for a Sunday publication, but this week got tripped up a bit, so I’m late.

Laurie, our Queen Bee for the Gridsters chose a pineapple block, two if we didn’t mind, and she asked for them in yellow and orange. I had made these blocks once before, with a free download of the pattern here, but the crown this time is a little different, a little taller with an extra row of blocks. We also added an extra border of low-volume blocks that wasn’t on the pattern. It took me a minute, but if you treat the extra low-volume blocks as part of a row, it goes better. (The other way is adding strips of blocks when the pineapple is finished: that’s a not-so-great method.)

Started quilting one of my own designs: Triad Harmony. I’ve made several in ombre fabrics which are fun to work with. I picked out all the thread colors for the star points, then went a different direction, decided to quilt them as one unit, so only one color of Magnifico thread was needed. Then I quilted a wrong color (hence the seam ripper).

I like to date-stamp my quilting along with what was finished. Lovely night-time fluorescent-lighting photo.

Here’s a comparison of the two quilt sizes in the pattern. I originally had a working name of Spectral Light for the larger one, but I just changed it up today to Eris. I’ll explain later on, when it’s finished.

Now I’m working on the red stack of nine-patches for another Christmas quilt. There is something so lovely about occupying my hands with nine-patches. It leaves me free to listen to audiobooks like Pachinko.

Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog, know that I am fascinated by and appreciate traditional clothing; the hanbok is no exception, having written about it when we visited the Chojun Textile & Quilt Art Museum when we in Seoul.

I was also interested in this article from the New York Times about the history of the hanbok.

You can make your own! Folkwear Pattern for Hanbok

Mother’s Day is coming up, then the last part of Heart’s Garden will drop. Krista, who is quilting it, has sent me images of the quilt up on her frame, and I’ll be excited to show it to you when it is complete. So far there are four parts:

On May 15, 2022 Part 5 (~~free pattern~~) will drop. [UPDATE: Pattern is now available in my pattern shop.]

If you have missed any of the parts, Part 4 is free until May 14th, and Parts 1, 2, and 3 are available for purchase. Part 5 will be free until the pattern comes out. Soon I will consolidate all the parts and have one pattern for sale, but that will come closer to June. I will have one more: Part 6, but that will be a blog post. If you don’t have time to sew this now, be sure to grab the free patterns for later. I have three quilters who are sewing along with me, and I love what they have done. A couple have made changes to the pattern, which are also fun to see. As I remind them, they are not pattern testers, but quilt makers. Feel free to make it your own!

Happy Quilting,

eQuilt Universe · Quilts · Textiles & Fabric

COVID-19 Face Masks

March 26, 2020May 7, 2026 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

NOTE: There are some updates to this post below.
(Sunday, April 5, 2020)

Our Inland Empire region of California hit print yesterday (New York Times), when speaking about the many quilters and sewists who are making facemasks:

“Sewers, we’ve always stepped up and done this thing,” said Denise Voss, the head of the Inland Empire chapter of the American Sewing Guild. “We’re made for this time. We’re happy to stay home and sew. And we all have stashes of fabric.” Her group, with about 130 members in Southern California, is making hundreds of face masks at the request of the Riverside University Health System Medical Center.” (New York Times)

Today I’m here to pass on information about face masks. I mentioned I was going to use the mask pattern from Dora of Orange Dot Quilts, as I think it seals up higher on the cheeks and nose. I see so many mask posts on Instagram, that I’ve started a Favorites tab for them. I’m most drawn to the stories of people who are making them, as I’m sure you are too.

Tamara, who commented on my last post, alerted me to JoAnn Fabrics’ kits for making face masks, also detailed in the publication Business Wire. An examination about whether or not we should even be sewing face masks came across my feed; The Craft Industry Alliance article says proceed, but with caution, making sure you have a place to send/bring your facemasks in this time of social distancing.

Face Masks France — *Even sewists in France are being asked to help.*

Our efforts as sewists across the nation were also covered in a couple of national news outlets:

The New York Times covered it from a more human interest viewpoint, telling the story of an army of sewists, from nearly-out-of-work costumers to those who have chosen to set aside their regular work to make masks:

“But the D.I.Y. pieces — generally stitched together with a few layers of cotton, elastic straps and, on ambitious designs, a flexible bridge over the nose — offer at least some protection. “Better than nothing” has become a popular phrase in the tight-knit sewing community. Some doctors are wearing the homemade fabrics over surgical or N95 masks, trying to prolong the coveted masks’ limited life spans. Other masks are being handed out at health clinics and nursing homes.

“It frees up the surgical masks for the people who are the highest risk,” said Dr. Nicole Seminara, a doctor at NYU Langone Health who is volunteering in the coronavirus ward. Dr. Seminara started a social media campaign, Masks4Medicine, to solicit homemade masks from the public.

“Are they effective like an N95? No,” she said. “We’re not claiming they are. If we had all the N95s in the world, it would be wonderful. But there’s a shortage right now.”

The Huffington Post covered Face Masks For Personal Use, and Face Masks For Medical Use, listing sources and quoting experts.

Generally it seems to be that we can make masks for those who don’t have direct contact with patients, perhaps front office workers who still could use the masks — thereby saving the short-in-supply N95 masks for critical care use.

One last thing: please write to your senator/congressman as well, telling them how you feel about the fact that we are tasked with providing masks for critical care usage. While we all are happy to do our part — as we have generous hearts — I’m sure we’d prefer that our nurses and doctors on the front line are well-protected as our nation struggles through this horrifying disease.

UPDATED NEWS ARTICLES/SOURCES:

Some hospitals are not collecting masks, some are. Should we be sewing them?
Deaconess Hospital list of Where to Donate Face Masks Use the filter for your state, and scroll down. It’s not always apparent to me that they are wanting home made masks, as some list N95s as their request.
Liz wrote in with these tips: “Using a modified Deaconess pattern, starting with two 7×10.5″ instead of 6×9, and stitching seam binding across the top and bottom of the mask (40″ piece for top, 36″ for bottom). Also very important to make an OBVIOUS FRONT and BACK side to the mask, by using two different fabrics or the reverse side of the main print on the back/inside portion.” I think her caution to make an obvious front and back side, if you are using the Deaconess pattern, is a great idea. If you are using the Orange Dot Quilts pattern, the shape of it denotes a front and back already.
PBS broadcast a segment about all the mask makers. (new!)

Face Mask Vermeer — *One of many COVID-19 memes on Instagram*

Below is a little graphic I found while browsing IG. I have no source on it, but it looks believable and makes me feel better about our efforts. While it does say that fabric masks do not filter viruses, they may offer some protection against the droplets that carry the viruses (according to other sources).

I saw one video where the maker cut up a HEPA filter to use in the mask. I have no info on that one! I’ve also seen people suggest lining them with coffee filters, nonwoven interfacing and used dryer sheets. That last one sounds pretty dubious, however I do like this one:

Kidding! But looking at all the humorous memes has helped my mood a lot (my daughter posts a ton of them), as did all your very kind letters from the last post. I still seem to be distracted a lot, and my mood goes up and down too much, but in hearing from other friends I realize I am not alone. Finally, my sympathies go out to those who all of a sudden have children home. Here’s a meme for you: