One of my Works in Progress (WIP)

One blog post linking with 2 other sites. Firstly I'm joining in over at Anthea's Hibiscus Stitches, 'Piece yourself together', and I'm also linking in with Jess's blog over at Life Under Quilts. Jess is another English Paper Piecing (EPP)/ hexie aficionado, just like me! :-)

My latest EPP project has managed to combine 2 of my crafting 'passions'...hexagons and Liberty prints. Last month I signed up for the swap through Instagram; Liberty of London Modern Hexie Swap. Each participant was allocated a colour or two. The 1 inch hexagons had to be made with Liberty Tana Lawn in that colourway/s. We had to make a total of 42 hexies in a variety of prints. Another requirement was that we had to glue the fabric hexagons to the papers. I've mainly only ever stitched the fabric on the papers, so it was good to persevere with another technique. ( and it worked so well with the thicker purchased papers)

My colour allocation was Blues and Purples...

 Here's a better view of the hexies, all glued and ready to be put into an envelope for mailing. 

We mail our hexies to a central point and some busy people will sort them so that everyone in the swap will receive a parcel of hexies back but these will be a selection representing the colours of the rainbow...well if not the whole rainbow at least red, pink, yellow, blue, green and purple. The idea then is to make something with your 'rainbow' hexies. 

It's been a fun project! 

Liberty...

That's 'Liberty' as in the Liberty shop in London.

Standing outside the iconic store in March this year...

On our trip earlier this year, DH took photos as I flitted from department to department...

To make up for only buying 4 pansy buttons on a visit in 2008, I bought some lovely goodies this year.

I love the Tana Lawn fabrics made by Liberty but they are a bit pricey...the sign in the Liberty store...

Last month, on the spur of the moment I signed up for the Liberty Club of Westwood Acres, an online fabric store. I don't need more fabrics but I was tempted by the idea of getting bundles of 10 lovely Tana Lawn cottons sent to my home monthly for 12 months. There were 3 options of the size of the pieces of fabric and I chose the fat sixteenths...still plenty of fabric to cut charm squares and some hexies.
Last week, my first mail out arrived...and I wasn't disappointed...( shipping from the US is extremely reasonable. Originally I had put my name on a waiting list for the club and it was only a few weeks until I got the invitation to join a new mail out club)

When DH and I visited the Liberty store in March, we looked through all the departments and it was on a lower level that we encountered items that were...shall we say...a bit different to what we would have expected the store to be selling... I did a doubletake when I started to read the labels....DH took a few photos for me...

You may be wondering whether we purchased any of these items????....

The answer is a resounding no...lol!

 But we have the photos to prove what we saw ...

Unfortunately we will never know what actually was in the jars! lol

Arrival in London...

We arrived in London at around 4.35 am London time after a flight of just over 12 hours. We had had a stopover at Hong Kong Airport for 6 hours and when we had arrived in HK there were no details on the board about what gate we would board through for our next flight. So we hung around Gate 60 as it was near where we had gone through Security after our flight from Brisbane.

I must share with you the photo I took of the label of some bottled water that I bought in Hong Kong Airport...

What a load of codswallop ! Lo

Eventually we found out that we would be boarding throughGate 2! It was then we really realised how BIG Hong Kong Airport is! Lol

When we finally boarded we were very tired? I actually dozed and missed the take-off... After we were served supper on board, I went to sleep again. When I awoke I was sure that I had slept for hours and hours...can you imagine my disappointment when I discovered that there was still 8 hours of the flight  to go! 

Nevertheless the time passed and we were at last in London...the photo below shows the images on the screens we could see from the outside camera on the plane. I had been able to see images of nighttime London via this camera, as we came in over the Thames Estuary. The man sitting behind us was obviously a local and had pointed out landmarks such as old docks and Canary Docks etc. 

Then it was all the official stuff such as Customs and Immigration.

DH and I then caught the train to Earls Court and then another train to West Brompton which was actually closer to our Earls Court hotel. . We were so lucky when we arrived at our hotel, as we were allowed an early check in! I was sooooo grateful. 

So we had a rest and a shower and then it was back to the station...

We went to the Westfields in Shepherd's Bush as DH was going to collect his Westfield discount card and also to organise a mobile phone...

A lovely little coffee shop called Butlers where we stopped for a coffee...

Some of the shops in the huge Westfield...

Also just beside the complex we saw this! 

This icecream truck is outside Jamie Oliver's restaurant. 

Just inside Westfields we saw this shop...I first found branches of this clothing chain throughout the US when we were there in 2011...same window display. I'm pointing to a Singer model just like my mum's. 

After that we walked around the streets of Shepherd's Bush outside the big complex. There were lots of fabric shops that reminded me of the fabric shops in the Indian quarter of Singapore...lots of fancy fabrics.

Then we caught a bus to the city...

And look what shop I saw in a street running off Oxford St?? 

I was busy looking at 'stuff' and DH was busy taking photos!

I bought some precuts Liberty fabric...I just ignored the price tags...

As well as the fabric strip WOF pieces, I also bought some precut hexies and card template for the papers. The Plan is to perhaps work on this EPP project while we travel. 

Day 1 of our trip also included dinner at a small pub up the street from our hotel...all very quaint.