This little tea kettle went to Liberty

You already know that we all got a great preview and hands on experience of Liberty's new quilting range, Liberty Lifestyle and you may well have read about the desgin process behind its first collection, 'Bloomsbury Gardens' on Katy's blog.  The fabric has started to arrive in USA stores and I know Annie at Village Haberdashery is stocking some of the 55 variations- that's 5 colourways and 11 prints!  

Michelle, otherwise known as Liberty Lifestyle lady, asked me to make a Lifestyle teacup just like the Liberty Lawn version I made testing Laurraine's Quilted Teacup pattern.

I was more than happy to oblige.

I love the mix in this collection, it is not matchy matchy- some prints look like they will never work with each other but they do and with a kick!  I added a label for Laurraine- her cute and easy label tutorial is here.

The linen is the same as the previous cup, Robert Kaufman's Essex linen/cotton blend in 'Unbleached'.

These pics remind me of vintage tea china sold in pairs and trios in antique shops!

And as the teacup was going to live a new and glamourous life in Cafe Liberty, I thought a little tea cozy would be a suitable traveling companion.

I was drawn to this print, Copeland, for the main body of the tea kettle.  Bold, dramatic and with a hint of bygone age.

Next to the teacup, it looks just about the right size to fill the cup!

I used some Lecien Cosmo embroidery floss for steam and a little Liberty pun on the cozy reverse.  you can find Cosmo at Eternal maker

The selvedges gave me just enough text for the handle and knob.

A bit of vintage Liberty lawn for the lining and a little label using Laurraine's tutorial inside.

You can find the tea kettle pattern on individual sale here and as a set here.  The tea cozy tutorial is in my free patterns and tutorials here.

Liberty Tea Cup

I recently had the chance to test a pattern for Laurraine at Patchwork Pottery.  She pattern tested for me with the Sew-Ichigo patterns, her proof reading and attention to detail was amazing, so I was happy to return the favour.   Regular readers here know my love affair with tea and tea imagery so I feel a kinship with Laurraine who is similarly inspired by tea and all that relates to it.  I followed her Quilted Teacup pattern  and made a Liberty lawn and linen tea cup.  

Liberty lawn is the perfect match for a teacup pattern, so English, delicate and small prints- just like floral china.  Ali at veryberryhandmade has started selling Liberty charm packs in a range of sizes at The Fabric Market Place.  I bought a pack of 15 x 4" squares and dug into my little Liberty stash making this a scrappy project, just as Laurraine intended.

The linen is Kaufman Essex linen in bleached white.  I had a selection of this sent to me when I did the Zakka Style Sew a long.  I first came across Essex in a quilting bee when it was part of a fabric selection.  It is linen/cotton blend, but it cuts like a heavy cotton- it doesn't slip and slide or even fray in the nightmarish way that 100% linen does.  The yarn dyed variations are incredible- I will show you more soon, but I always like to have a few colours of the standard Essex in stock and I have always bought from Simply Solids.

 To make this a truly scrappy project, I even pieced my binding.   Liberty lawn is thin enough and strong enough to make a great binding without significant seam bulk.  Laurraine's pattern prints as a booklet so there are illustrations and words for each stage so I was clear on what I was doing at all times.  I especially like pictures when I am following instructions and Laurraine has tweaked all the illustrations to make sure they accurately represent each stage of the process.

It is quite a fiddly pattern as all 3D sewing tends to be but it is not hard.   The skills covered are bias binding- making and attaching and then just standard sewing.     There is a balance of hand sewing and machine stitching and she includes a glossary and diagrams of all hand stitches involved.

The pattern comes out at around the size of a medium china tea cup- so delightful!  Now all I need is for Liberty to do a mix and match china tea set using their classic pattern archives!

You can find Laurraine's pattern here along with other equally detailed and cute projects.