Our Favourite Fabric Shops

This post has been a long time coming! This month was the month that I finally sat down and compiled our list of places we buy the thing we love more than anything else...fabric. You know that H and I both have a love for fabric, print and colour so it is only fair that we share our favourite places to go, to top up our stashes. We would love to know your favourites too, leave them in the comments below...

Make it: Bucket Pincushion and Pretty Pins

Every sewer should have a cute pincushion, it's just no fun sewing without one. It is even better when you can use up some old bits and bobs to make one and pretty up your pins to match. I have used this cute little bucket to make mine, but you can use anything you have around the house, from ramekins to teacups and a pretty piece of fabric, I have used this yummy liberty print. 

You will need: stuffing, a bucket (ramekin or cup) a scrap of fabric, needle and thread, glue, scissors, glass pebbles or stones, pins and nail varnish. 

Start off by filling the bottom of your bucket with the glass pebbles. You can use anything for this, it is just to give the bottom some weight so it wont move when you pop your pins in. Next, take your fabric and cut a 25cm square. Fold the square in half and then in half again, trim the raw edges off in a curve. This should give you a rough circle of fabric.  

Take your needle and thread and sew all the way around about 25mm in from the edge. Before you gather up your stitching pop in a large handful of stuffing.

Once the stuffing is in the pouch pull up your stitches and secure it by wrapping your thread around the bottom.  Before you pop a couple of stitches in to hold it securely, put it into the bucket to make sure it fits snugly, then you can add or take out some stuffing to make it fit.

Take your glue and put a thick layer around the rim of your bucket. let it go a little tacky before placing your pin top in place.

Now to pretty up those pins. I have used nail varnish in some of my favourite Essie colours to paint my flower headed pins, I love the pins but the primary colours they come in don't fill me with joy.  This is a simple solution to make your dull pins look a little more fun and match with your pretty new pin cushion. Just make sure your polish is set before you use them.  I leave at least 24 hours before I use them, and as with any plastic headed pins never iron over them, just in-case.

I really love these pins! I cant wait to use them for a project. I love how using cute sewing supplies can make you feel happy about even the most mundane of sewing project.  I have some repair jobs to do this weekend and these will make doing those a little more fun.

How do you keep yourself happy doing those things that have to be done that you don't want to do? What's your favourite sewing accessory? If you have a go at making one of these do let us know, we love seeing pictures of the things that you make, and don't forget to #livelovemake.

Sammy xxx


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Our Favourite Posts 2014

2014 is almost over and what a year we have had here on Live it. Love it. Make it. We have more of you reading our blog than ever before and it makes us feel truly humbled that so many of you are enjoying what we share here. We would not get the opportunities that we have had this year if it wasn't for all your support.  Before 2015 gets into full swing we wanted to go back and remember some of our personal favourite posts from the year.

Jan - Understanding a Dress Pattern 
The Series of posts I (Sammy) wrote about how to navigate your way through a paper pattern has been one of our most viewed series this year and one of my favourite to write. Are there any other things like this that you struggle with? Let us know and we might be able to turn it into a post for you.

Feb - Make it: Ginger Biscuits
These biscuits are AMAZING and so simple to make, they had to make it into a top list somewhere. They would make a great Christmas Party something to take too, although be warned, they are rock hard after a day due to the golden syrup in them.  Bake them in the morning and they will be great for that evening.

March - Our Liberty Adventure
In March we got to visit Liberty thanks to the lovely girls of the New Craft Society to hear about Liberty fabrics and have afternoon tea. It was a lovely experience and one we will never forget.

April - Our Tea and Crafting Adventure
We loved going to see the Tea and Crafting workshop space for the first time and have been again since.  In April it was to learn machine embroidery though and it was great fun, we instantly became hooked!

May - Blogtacular
We headed to London for our first blog convention.  We had such an amazing time, got to meet some of our blogging idols and made some lovely new friends.  Despite H and I both being rather poorly all weekend.

June - Our 500th post and OMG we are in Mollie Makes
Well, we couldn't do this without mentioning one of our biggest moments this year.  We got a project featured in Mollie Makes! And an interview too, it's still exciting and we loved being part of it, fingers crossed we can do it again soon.

July - Brush Up Those Blogging Skills
For Me (Sammy) July was all about learning, I shared my favourite Blogging e-courses that I have taken in the past and learnt some new crafts on my road trip to Austria.

August - How we Wear New Look Special
We loved working with New Look and this is one of my (H) favourite How we Wear posts of the year, we look so glam!  Plus we got to work with one of our favourite brands - what's not to like!

September - Make it: Cable Cosy
By far our most popular tutorial of this year and my (Sammy) favourite has to be the cable cosy we made in Makers month. With the help of Dashwood Studio's gorgeous fabric and a need to store all my cables in one place this cosy is my favourite post of the year.

October - Make it: Spooky Spiders and Vampire Bats
Who doesn't love some spiders and bats for Halloween! Such a simple make to decorate the place or just be a fun make with the kids for the time of year.

November - Sew Crafty Online is Now Open
On a personal note (Sammy) opening my shop to a whole new customer base made my November, heck it made my year!  After working on it for so long it was such a relief to have the site go live. We have had such a lovely response and lots of lovely sales.

December - Gift Wrapped
The best part of Christmas for us is the giving of presents and what better way for us to enjoy it, than some amazing gift wrapping.  The gift is just part of it!

Wow! what a year it has been! What have been your highlights from 2014? and what are you looking forward to next year?

H and Sammy xxx


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Review: Nokia Lumia 1320

Being bloggers with full time jobs, Sammy and I are always looking for things to make our lives easier so when the lovely people at Nokia gave us the opportunity to have a go with the Nokia Lumia 1320 we thought it would be a great opportunity to see what could be done with it for blogging on the go and as we are both iPhone users we wanted to see what other phones out there had to offer.

The first thing to note is that this phone is advertised as a part phone, part tablet, a 'Phablet'! If you are on the fence about the need in your life for an iPad (other tablet computers are available) then I would think that this would be a good way to ease yourself in to one, as the price is way more competitive. As far as using it as a phone, we both have small hands and it is significantly bigger than a normal phone so making sure we didn't drop it was our first challenge! We loved the yellow back cover and yet you can easily get hold of a variety of cases and covers if you get a bit bored of it. We also liked the look and feel of the phone as its smooth and good to look at.

One of the best things for Sammy about the Nokia is that it is a WindowsPhone and runs Windows 8 so you can sync it with your PC, if you are a Windows 8 user rather than a Mac user (like we both are) this is a great feature. This is also where the size of the screen really comes into it's own as you can clearly see documents when you are away from your computer, you can use Microsoft Word, Excel and OneNote on the move. It is great for viewing blog pages and internet sites clearly and the screen didn't make our old, squinty eyes ache.

Nokia Lumia 1320 seen here next to Sammy's iPhone 5s

Unfortunately for us small, right handed people all the function buttons are, quite awkwardly, positioned on the right hand side.  If we held it in our right hand, the side of our palm managed to press the buttons by mistake all - the - time! But if we held it in our left hand our fingers just wouldn't quite reach comfortably to press the buttons whilst using our thumbs to navigate. We are both used to working our iPhones one handed, so it took a while to get used to, but once we did get used not holding it too tight and using two hands it navigates quickly and smoothly.

For both of us having a good quality camera on the go is important, looking at the stats for the phone, the camera on this one is at a similar level to the iPhone 4, however because of the larger screen it did feel like the pictures were lower in quality with a very grainy feel.  I would say that the larger screen highlighted the flaws in the camera quality. However, we found an article in Creative review where they had used the Lumia for a fashion centrefold and so it is clearly an issue that can be worked around, maybe you just need some better lighting, great editing software and bigger hands!?

These are some of the photos we took with the Nokia 1320. These are all unedited, fresh from the phone. Sammy took it to work with her for the day to see how the camera coped with colour and texture. Then I took it to Liberty with us for our adventure there and found that it took great photos in low light without needing to use its built in flash.

Sammy had a play with 'selfies' and the standard editing apps available on the Lumia.  The cinemagraph app was great fun, letting you apply some super funky filters, great for us Instagram lovers.  There are also a bunch of apps you can add via the Windows app store, check out Reddit's run-down of the best ones.

All in all we did like the Nokia Lumia 1320, but for us perhaps just a little too large for a phone and not big enough for us to be a useful tablet. Sammy was disappointed with the camera quality compared to her iPhone 5s, what you get for the price though is brilliant.  As we said for those unsure if a tablet is the way to go, this would be a great alternative as it can be used as both a phone and tablet in one. Great for blogging on the go if you are a Windows 8 user as it has flawless compatibility with your existing apps. The look and styling of the phone is both classy and trendy, and the Windows 8 functionality is a dream to use on this device thanks to the larger screen.

If you are interested in learning more about the Nokia Lumia 1320, you can check out the Nokia website for more technical information.

H and Sammy x

Our Liberty Adventure with The New Craft Society

I'm not sure that we have entirely recovered from the trip we went on last week, it was a little bit like a dream. H and I got invited by the lovely Rosie and Hannah AKA The New Craft Society to attend their blog birthday party, we had to read the email a few times before it sank in that their party was to be held at one of our favourite places in the whole world.... Liberty!

So last Wednesday at 6.30pm we headed to the 3rd floor Heritage Suite at Liberty, just off the Haberdashery department (we felt right at home), where we were met by the Liberty design team. They ushered us into the room that was once Arthur Lasenby Liberty's office, to enjoy the most beautiful afternoon tea and hear them talk all about the S/S14 Liberty Art Fabrics collection.

Each place was set with a Liberty fabric charm bracelet and (the most awesome) goodie bag from The New Craft Society girls. It was like we had stumbled into a secret Mad Hatters tea party, if the Hatter had worked exclusively in Liberty of course!

This years Spring/ Summer collection was inspired by the store itself. Head designer, Emma, had discovered a map of the building from the seventies and it sparked the idea for the overall theme. Each of the 40 prints in the collection is inspired by a department within the shop, and designed to reflect the mood of the area and what is sold there. The colour pallets were inspired by the artist materials. They took the most iconic art materials and used the colours and tones from those to create the pallets that were then applied to the collection.

The beautiful Keighley, Liberty print designer, was on hand to show us some of their original art work.

After enjoying the tea and cakes we got to hear the story behind each of the 40 designs in the new seasons collection, along with getting to see some of the original artwork from the designers and collaborative artists they invite to design for them. We got to hear from Anna Buruma who is in charge of the archive (amazing job!) Who told us about how a lot of the fabric designs from the early years were never properly labelled or cared for, she calls them orphans.  I was stunned to hear that until Anna was put in charge 15 years ago the archive was mostly uncared for and when she arrived it was basically a pile of books and papers on the floor of the warehouse!

H and I are both fascinated by print and design, so it was amazing to see the processes that each design goes through from initial sketch to final print.  We got to hear from David who designed the print 'Queue for the Zoo' a quirky animal print including a giraffe wearing trainers to represent the children's department.

We were also treated to a sneaky peak at the Autumn/ Winter 14 collection.  This was a paper cut by Helen Musselwhite was just one of the artists asked to collaborate with Liberty for this collection. This paper cut had been photographed and digitally printed onto fabric to create the design.

As if all that wasn't awesome enough we were then taken on a tour of the shop to see all the departments and inspiration behind each of the designs.

A teapot in the gift department by the designer Fornasetti, who's design house has had a long relationship with Liberty.  A scarf using a similar sun design was chosen to create the print that represents this area of the store on the map.

A stack of amazing carpets that inspired the print for their department and a wall of V.V.Rouleaux ribbons in the Haberdashery department.

We got to see the collection for real on the shelves of the fabric department. It was so neat and tidy after all the customers had left the store.

We visited each department and got to see the fabrics in context of the department they had been designed to represent.

We got to visit areas in the shop that we had never been to before, I had never been to the shoe department (for fear of a credit card meltdown) or the Men's department in the basement.

It felt so special to be taken around by the design team, each of them has a great knowledge of the shop, as well as the fabrics, it was a pleasure to be able to ask questions and hear their stories of their time at Liberty.  We were shown around by the gorgeous Jacinta from the marketing department, she was wearing a silk shift made up in Wild flowers, one of the amazing paper-cut inspired A/W14 prints. You can read about the paper-cut Su Blackwell created on her blog.

We had the most amazing time and are hugely grateful to Rosie and Hannah AKA The New Craft Society for inviting us to their party and to the design team at Liberty for throwing such a lovely event.

We were not the only bloggers who got to go on the tour, as well as meeting up with Rosie and Hannah, we got to meet with some girls we really admire, shout out to Leanne at Knit me a Cake, Lotts from Lotts and Lots, Katy from Apartment Apothacary and the girls from the pattern company By Hand London. We were so overwhelmed by it all that we didn't get to meet everyone who was there, if we missed you, give us a shout and a link to your blog in the comments.

Sammy and H x