A year of blogging (and a giveaway)

This giveaway is now closed.

Well, I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging for a whole year and I am more amazed that my blog-birthday didn’t pass me by as I’m not usually very good at recognising significant dates.

To celebrate, I’ve decided to have a giveaway and share my love of Liberty of London. You may have spotted the odd bit of Liberty fabric in some of my projects – this is just a fraction of my Liberty fabric stash. I'm not very good at using my Liberty fabric, but I love reading about the different designs and the historical element of some of them and so I was delighted to receive the "Liberty: British Colour Pattern" book for Christmas.  

This is an absolutely gorgeous book, especially if you are a Liberty-phile like me, and it covers many aspects of the company, not just the fabric. Distributed amongst the pages are envelopes containg bonus materials such a reproduction adverts, designs, etc. It was only published last year and a section about the recent Lifestyle range of craft cottons is included.

 
(If you want to know more about the book, Kerry from VeryKerryBerry and Carina from Carina’s Craftblog have reviewed it on their blogs, so head over there and take a look.)

Due to the size and weight of this book, I’m going to have to restrict this part of the giveaway to UK addresses only, but for overseas readers I’ve raided my stash and will part with some of my precious Liberty fabric.  There are skinny quarters of Liberty Lantana wool in the classic Hera pattern and Liberty Tana Lawn in the classic Pepper pattern, as well as few scraps of lawn that would be suitable for string piecing.

To win one of these prizes, all I ask you to do is to follow this blog. There are buttons for following with Bloglovin and Feedly, but if you have another method, do let me know. Leave a comment saying how you are a follower and which prize you would like. If you have a UK address, you can choose the book or the fabric, but overseas addresses are limited to the fabric only. A bonus entry is available if you spread the news of this giveaway by Twitter, Facebook or on your own blog – just leave a second comment telling me how you’ve shared the giveaway.   

The giveaway will close at 10pm GMT on Wednesday 5 March and if you are a no-reply blogger please make sure that your comment includes a way of contacting you.

 

A delightful discovery - Liberty Bell

I’ve found a LQS – a local (ish) quilt shop and I can’t believe it has taken me this long to find it.

Although I work only a few minutes from the Liverpool branch of Abakhan, it can’t really be described as a quilt shop. There are some bargains to be found, but it can be a bit hit and miss if you are looking for anything in particular or for the latest fabric line from major manufacturers. I had read about a quilt shop in Chester, but couldn’t remember the name, only the vague recollection that it was on Bridge Street Rows. So on Saturday, I headed off to Chester in search of this elusive quilt shop.

(For those who have not been to Chester, certain streets have shops on two levels. There are the pavement level shops which are easy to see and then there are shops on an upper level which are more difficult to spot from pavement level. You can read more about the Chester Rows here, here, or here).

 

The shop was indeed on Bridge Street Rows and from the window display the quilting treasures that lay inside were not obvious. Bolts and bolts of quilting fabric can be found at the back of the shop and most have FQs ready cut and displayed next to the bolts. As I am still on my fabric diet, I resisted the temptation of some Morris Modernised or some Downton Abbey and limited myself to a few FQs of textured solids and a reel of Aurifil. 

The name of this shop is Liberty Bell and once my fabric diet is over, I will certainly be back to be tempted by all the fabrics I usually only get to see at shows or online. My apologies to any readers from Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales who have known about this shop for ages, but I’m so pleased at finding this shop that I wanted to spread the word.