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...

Design your own Fabric with Zazzle

A few weeks ago the lovely people at Zazzle got in touch to tell us about their fabric printing service. Having recently said farewell to the fabric printing service from By Hand London, Sammy was so excited to have a try and see what Zazzle had to offer. They offered us a free sample of the fabric to have a play with so watch out for a tutorial coming on Friday using the fabric Sammy ordered. Sammy has bought t-shirts and merchandise from them in the past so she knew that their quality was great, but we were not sure how simple it would be to design our own fabric with Zazzle or how it would turn out.  

We both started by having some fun in Photoshop and created a .jpg file that we could upload to the site, this is Sammy's above.  H had fun with the background eraser tool on Photoshop so she could use one of the colours from Zazzle - more on that below.

Once on the Zazzle site it was then super easy to upload the image we had designed into their fabric creator.  H used one of the background colours on file, whilst Sammy's was all together on the .jpg file.

Then you get to play around with tiling the pattern, rotating your design and playing with the size of your print.  You can use the tiling options or not, so that's always good for choice.

We love that you can view your design in lots of different sizes, it loads the images with your design on really fast so it is easy to get a real idea of what your fabric will really look like with the handy thumbnails underneath the main picture.

There are seven different types of fabric to choose from, but don't get too excited, some of them are priced at over £60 per metre, which we feel is a little pricey, even for high quality custom printed fabric. The combed cotton is the cheapest option at £26.95 per metre, The pima cotton that H chose was £30.40 per metre and the cotton twill Sammy chose was £37.90 per metre. You can order by the fat quarter though which would keep the cost down for smaller projects. 

When our fabric arrived we were really happy with the quality of the fabric and the quality of the printing on H's fabric was beautiful as the colours were very true to her design. Sammy's fabric on the other hand was sadly not so perfect.

She was a little disappointed because the fabric looked like it had been double printed, it makes the design look a little blurred. She would have been more disappointed if we had paid the £37.90 that it would normally cost. 

When Sammy spoke to the team they said that they would absolutely replace the fabric, if we wanted, as it was gifted to us anyway, She decided that it would be fine for the project that she had planned. Good to know that if there was a problem as a paying customer that they would go the extra mile to sort it out. 

The Zazzle team said:

We have a 100% satisfaction policy at Zazzle, so if a product is unsatisfactory, and the customer provides a photo like you did here, they would be offered a replacement or refund. Customer can call our freephone number 0800-6-929953 10am-6pm Monday to Friday or email us here http://www.zazzle.co.uk/about/contactus.

So overall we would highly recommend Zazzle if you had a special project in mind that you need some bespoke fabric for. We would say that the price makes it a little risky if your not 100% sure you are going to use it for something really worthy of it. 

It was unfortunate that Sammy's fabric wasn't perfect, even big companies make mistakes sometimes but at least they offered to sort it out properly. Everything about the process was easy and fun. Sammy love's designing fabrics and she is looking forward to having a go again soon as she already have a few deisigns and projects in mind.

Have you tried the fabric service from Zazzle? Are you looking to get some fabric printed for a special project? Let us know in the comments below and don't forget to come back to see what Sammy has made with her fabric on Friday.

Sammy & H, xxx

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Make it: Super Easy Quilt

If you want to impress someone this year with a super easy, yet really impressive, gift this year make them a quilt blanket. Everyone loves snuggling up under a cosy blanket, they make great gifts and you can make them really personal by picking fabrics that you know the recipient will just love. I have to be honest, I am not the worlds greatest quilter, I think it stems from not wanting to cut up beautiful fabrics into little pieces just to sew them back together again. However this easy quilt requires very little cutting and you still get that lovely cosy blanket at the end of it.

I chose once again to use my some of my current favourite fabrics from Dashwood Studio to create this 'quilt' These are from the Retro Orchid collection.

You will need: 6 x 30cm strips of your choice of cotton fabrics (at least 110cm) wide, 150cm x 100cm of fleece fabric, Fabric Scissors, thread and your Sewing Machine.

Start by pinning and then sewing together two of your cotton strips. Pin them right sides together making sure you are sewing a nice and straight seam. You can use your machine foot to help guide your stitching. Then un-fold and pin and sew your next strip in place.

Continue until you have sewn all your strips together. Fold your quilt front in half length ways and mark the centre line with a row of pins. Then be brave and cut up the middle line you have marked, removing the pins as you go. You then want to take your two halves and flip one so it is facing the opposite way around. Line the two pieces up and sew them back together to create the chequered front piece.

If you have been neat, all your squares should line up nicely, if not don't worry too much, mine didn't, I think it adds a bit of quirkiness to the finished piece. It made it look more handmade! So next, is to add the fleece backing, I have not added any wadding to mine as I like my blankets to be a little more floppy and snuggly. Stitch all the way around the edge of your cotton and fleece. Make sure you leave a gap around 15-20 cm open at the end. Use this opening to pull the whole of your quilt right side out.

Folding in the raw edges, start at the opening and sew a line of top stitching all the way around the edge of your quilt about 1-1.5 cm in from the edge. And  you are all done, see I promised it would be easy!

If you can bear to part with your new cosy blanket it would make a great gift for anyone this Christmas, It would be so cute for a new arrival in baby colours and equally in fun boy fabrics for any Kiddos you need gifts for, a great alternative to more plastic toys. I am gifting mine to my Mother-in-Law who loves handmade presents and always admires the quilts in our home.

Who would you make one for this year?

Sammy xxx


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Live it: Our Bath Adventure

You should all know by now how much H and I love an adventure and if you caught our post last year about the Bath Christmas market you will be aware of how much we wanted to take a second look at this beautiful city. A few weeks ago we got the chance to spend a weekend there and despite the April showers, we spent the whole time exploring all of Bath's best bits. Here are some of our highlights. 

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

Understanding a Dress Pattern Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of 'Understanding a Dress Pattern' this week we are going through what's inside of the envelope. Having followed all the information in the first two parts about how to choose your pattern and how to find out what you need, lets get stuck in to how to make your garment.

Inside the envelope you will find the pattern instructions and the pattern tissue pieces.

The Pattern Instructions

If you take out your instructions the first page will show you line drawings of all the designs, a drawing of all the pieces and which design they belong too. From this you can sort out which pattern pieces you need to cut from the tissue pieces.

Next to that there will usually be a glossary of terms and directions. If you are new to patterns it is a good idea to have a thorough read of this before you start, it is always there for you to refer back to if there is something you don't understand.

Underneath all that will be your cutting lay outs, the blueprints if you like for where you need to place your pieces on your fabric. Again there will be options for different widths of fabric and sometimes sizes. Find the layout that is relevant to you and use that to place your pattern.

The Pattern Tissue

Having read the first part of your instructions, you can unfold your pattern tissue and roughly cut the pieces you need for your chosen design. Although, I usually don't cut the tissue, to make my patterns last longer I use greaseproof paper and trace over the pieces to create copies, leaving the original intact.

This just means that I can always go back to the pattern at another time and make a different size or variation and not have cut away anything I may need. (If you choose to copy, make sure you are accurate and that you copy all the information that you need from each piece) The markings on a pattern can be overwhelming as there are so many with multi sized patterns, but if you have read your glossary it will become clearer. you can always refer to that if you are unsure.

Back to the Instructions

The next step is to start following the instructions, I usually go through them and mark (in pencil) all the parts that are relevant to the design I am making before I start so it is easier to follow as the instructions for all the garments in your pattern are together on the sheet and some steps will be the same for multiple garments. By highlighting (in pencil) the ones you need you can easily ignore the ones you don't need this time.

Once you have read through the instructions you can go to cut out your pieces and start creating your garment. Make sure that the fabric is folded correctly and they you are cutting the right amount of pieces. Having read through the instructions it will have given you a better understanding of how all the pieces go together and you can start to construct your garment with more confidence.

Learning how to use a pattern is one of the best things I ever did, I am so grateful that my mum taught me from an early age. The thing I like most about making clothes is that you end up with clothes that are totally unique to you, with your choice of style and fabric.

I hope that was helpful to you if you are thinking of having a go at making something from a pattern, and that it has made it a little easier to follow. Is there anything else that you are interested in knowing about patterns? leave a comment and I will try and answer you query, If I think others might be interested I will write a post about it. Check out part 1 here and part 2 here, also check out our post about choosing fabrics from last year.

Sammy xxx

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