Poppyprint: London

You've already seen an Instagram primer from my trip in the form of a mosaic and the special Liberty Fabric post is here. Yesterday I posted more about the Fat Quarterly Retreat including the people I met, handmade goodies I swapped, and projects that I made in workshops. Today, I'll take you on a little photo tour of the city (or at least the small portion that I saw). For those of you wanting to sit through a slide show of all 186 photos in my Flickr London set, head here.

Keep in mind I only had one full day of sightseeing, which also had to include shopping for gifts and a momento or 3 for me, lunch, dinner, many drinks to keep hydrated in the heat, a show and visiting with new friends! Leanne and I met at 8:00 a.m. to start the day with a quick coffee/breakfast at Starbucks and we didn't return, sweaty, exhausted and laden with shopping bags, to our hotels until after 10:30 p.m. We rocked it, actually. Rather than a chronological story, I'm just going to take you through the day in pictures.

Museum of Natural History

A pretty Kensington mews - laneway houses in converted garages

Sweet ride!

The approach from Leicester Square

Seats for the evening's outdoor London Opera production in Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square fountain

Big Ben from Trafalgar Square

Charles I (familiar flag in the background, flying at Canada House)

The years have taken their toll, base of Charles I statue

Admiralty Arch

No mistaking who's office this is!

Approaching Leicester Square to buy our discount show tickets; we saw One Man, Two Guv'nors which despite being about 90 degrees in the theatre was very funny and entertaining.

It was here that Leanne and I met up with Shevvy, a super fun member of the London MQG and willing companion for lunch and some Covent Garden shopping. It was so great to meet her (as well as Susan and Marg & daughter Emma from Australia for dinner and our show) prior to retreat starting. Just having a few more familiar faces at a retreat of 150 people was a comfort. Oh, and for those interested, we ate at Jamie Oliver's Union Jack's - a casual open air resto under cover of Covent Garden Market where we enjoyed flat bread pizza and coleslaw. It was so hot, no one was really all that hungry.

Morning in the Theatre District

The ubiquitous double-deckers (never rode on one, sadly)

Garden courtyard behind St. John's (the "Actor's Church") at Covent Garden

Covent Garden market stalls at lunchtime

Last night's holdovers, the Crown & Anchor

We missed out on Laduree while in France last year; the Champs Elysees line up was just too unbearable, so I enjoyed a salted caramel macaron at the London location instead!

Covent Garden covered marketplace

The rest of the day was spent in and out of Covent Garden area shops (Cath Kidston, where I purchased a sweet summer dress, Leanne scored a wallet and Shevvy a handbag all on sale. Then to Fly London where I found the most sublime black pumps on sale pour moi, and SuperDry for a cool belt for T). I also picked up some great tea towels (Leanne was hoarding them and I really felt it necessary to get on the tea towel bandwagon!) at Cath Kidston and the National Gallery gift shop and Tshirts, mugs and magnets at the London Transit Museum gift shop.

Friday morning the time change finally caught up with me and I was wide awake at 5:30 a.m. What to do until the Liberty talk at 11:00? After completing some handstitching on my little house tape-measures for the sample swap, I decided to sneak out without waking Susan and head to Hyde Park for a walk. There wasn't much action in the park at 7:00 a.m. except for intrepid triathletes swimming in the murky Serpentine, dog walkers in the meadows and a few cyclists. It was a gorgeous morning and by 8:30 a.m. as I closed my loop around the Serpentine, it was already extremely hot.

morning view from my hotel room

Mounted police (?) setting out for the day
ETA: my Brit friends inform me these are military men, the Horse Guards, returning from morning training in the park.

self explanatory!

The Queen's Temple

Hyde Park heron takes flight

Symmetry at the Italian Gardens

Italian Gardens - gorgeous

On Sunday afternoon after the retreat ended, I still had about 5 hours to do something Londony before dinner plans with the Fat Quarterly crew. There was a group headed to Liberty for more shopping, but I was rather spent (quite literally and figuratively) and wanted some quiet time on my own. A trip to the Tate Britain, boat ride on the Thames to the Tate Modern and a walk back along the South Bank was my afternoon.

Frisbee okay?

At the Tate Britain

"First Abstract Painting" Ben Nicholson, 1934. Quilt inspiration!

Brits: is this actually MI6, or just the building that stood for it in Skyfall?

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, South Bank

Tate Modern

Millenium Bridge, looking north to St. Paul's. When I was in London 13 years ago this bridge was closed as it was too unstable for walking. Seems under control now.

Bubble fun on the South Bank

Snacks from an Airstream

Power To The People

Where boards go to skate...

Where they go to die. Skateboard graveyard, Hungerford Bridge pier

A view of Festival grounds on the South Bank and London's tallest building, The Shard

Gloucester Road tube station, my 'home' station in London

Kensington still life (near my hotel)

Never tried them, but it's a lofty claim!

Have you had your fill? That was a big post to get through, thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed the visual tour of my brief stay in London. I left the city after retreat for a few days in lovely Derbyshire with Lynne and her children. Photos of their local town and village will be my final UK trip post - coming right up!

I've been getting requests to share my fabric purchases from London. Not one to keep anyone in suspense, here you have it!

Within four hours or so of my arrival in London and before I'd even eaten a proper meal, Leanne took me off to Shaukat for some Liberty love. Tana lawn before dinner: my kind of London experience!

rolls and rolls of tana lawn

Prior to the trip, I was warned that this shop can be overwhelming but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only were we the only two customers in the store, it was beautifully air conditioned (man, London was an oven while I was there - I haven't sweat that much since Bangkok in '91), spotlessly clean and very well organized. My mission was to come home with some small pieces of fabric that I could use to make the Liberty Spool Quilt from Alexia Abegg's Liberty Love book.

Shaukat's minimum cut is a 1/2 meter, but lucky for collectors like me they also sell remnant pieces for 1, 3 and 5 pounds sterling, depending on the size. Leanne and I quickly took to the remnant piles and dug for our favourites.

Most of these pink prints are from a strip roll up I purchased at Liberty.

Darker prints that I will use for spool ends in the quilt. Some were traded at the Saturday night marketplace held at retreat.

eep! It's Hello Kitty!

The next day we were part of a lucky group from retreat that was selected to participate in a designer talk at the Liberty of London store. After some initial confusion and traipsing up and down stairs and elevators between the store and the office building behind it, we settled into a lovely cool conference room.

First a young designer with the company talked about collaborations with artists in some recent collections. Then Liberty's passionate archivist gave us a history of the company and it's flagship store, followed by a slide show. She shared comparative photos of the archival designs that inspired modern counterparts for the Stile (which they pronounce "steel") collection of quilting cottons. The excitement didn't end there for me. After the talk, I went down a staircase and exited the office building through a set of doors into an alley behind the main store. Wrong move. I set off the Liberty Secret Service. All at once I had 4 Italian men dressed in black with ear pieces running down the alleyway from both buildings! Hehe, my bad. Luckily, I could play the innocent foreigner and no harm was done.

Some photos from inside the store: