My Couture London Sewing Adventure

Here’s everything that happened on my London couture sewing adventure…. Keep reading or watch my YouTube video for much more detail!

First up Liberty. This is such a beautiful space to visit because of its stunning architecture, inspiring products, and beautiful sewing department. But this summer it’s been the home of the Patchwork Collective. This was a super sized patchwork house that’s been on display until the end of July.

The house features patches from artists and designers, community groups, schools, people like that. And with over 1500 submissions, those last pieces that didn’t make it into the house. And they’re held in swatch books that you could flip through and in the bottom of the house would like a lovely seated area that you could explore, to make sure you could see everybody.

You could look down from all the different levels of the building to make sure you could see every patch. There were some really inspiring makes.

And on the top floor, there’s also an exhibit covering the, iconic motifs used in Liberty artwork and how the design studio was run over the years. It was a really great trip and we couldn’t miss out on stopping in the fabric department. I was on a hunt for “Costume”, which is one of the new Tana Lawn prints. Kind of a Chrysanthemum on bright acid yellow, but sadly it was sold out.

Still a very enjoyable visit. My aunt and I really enjoyed looking at all the Farm Rio, and the Rixo and the Liberty pyjamas and all the different sections. The sale section. Much more. It’s always a good trip to Liberty.

Next up, the Couture Inside Out workshop at the Fashion and Textile Museum. This is a smaller, less known museum in Bermondsey, and it was set up in 2003 by Zandra Rhodes. It’s actually now operated by the Newham College of Further Education. Hence, having all these amazing and educational workshops and events. This is my second time at inside out and just like before, I regret how much I’ve already forgotten of the stream of amazing facts and anecdotes shared by the team hosting us during the morning.

In 2018, the event was hosted by Dennis Nothdruft. And this year we had Teresa Collenette leading us through the garments. We saw over 20 garments, in the space of an hour and a half. It was very fast paced, but we saw designs from the 50s, 60s and 70s and then some from the 2000. It was so amazing, as always.

In this session we saw three Dior pieces. In the past, at the 2018 session I saw some other additional Dior pieces that weren’t shown today, which proves that they do sort of change the line up. Many Dior dresses actually came as two pieces worn together. A corset top with a sort of under skirt attached, and then a separate over skirt.

The first piece we saw was one from the many Lily of the Valley, sort of, inspired collections from, spring summer 1954. The trim was all made in the Atelier with the flower heads, those Lily of the valley flower heads made by hand with fabric stitched into little balls, like hand-stitched closed to create that effect.

Inside, the bodice had steel boning, and that was attached to a strong but sort of lightweight mesh and two horizontal elastic tapes zigzagged around the inside to enable the wearer to pull in the corset for the perfect fit. So clever. Like amazing internal structure that you wouldn’t notice from the outside.

The second was from the spring summer 1957 line. I think we said it was the Rococo collection. That was the year Dior died. And it’s another two part dress where, it had an over skirt and it was all originally in duck egg blue. Sadly, it’s now rather faded. Doesn’t it look quite gray here? The dress had an in-built bone corset, again with multiple layers of, under skirt and over skirt.

The bodice was actually taffeta overlaid with organza, which is embroidered and beaded. The, over skirt was a very delicate silk organza, which is again exquisitely tambour embroidered with this scene of shepherds and shepherdess and pipers… kind of tells the story of a romance in different panels. The skirt had sort of 5 or 6 under skirt layers and, was… had like a finishing of synthetic horsehair to give it the volume.

We also saw one of the Miss Dior dresses designed for Dior’s Sister Catherine.

A popular piece that was there in 2018 and returned again this year was the Balenciaga tree bark effect Velvet coat. This is a green velvet quilted sackback coat from the mid 1960s. The buttons were all hand knotted ribbon and they actually look more like brooches.

We saw an amazing little cream boucle wool two piece by Chanel, it’s a boxy style top with a zip up back little pockets and chain detail trim. And that came with a matching box pleated skirt, which, was designed definitely to be worn together.

One of the stars from both years that I visited was a Bellville Sassoon yellow canary silk jacket – tunic embroidered design from spring 1972.

The Pierre Cardin quilted coat and dress that we got to see felt very modern. Very chic. Could easily be worn separately or together. And I absolutely loved the marabou Feather and Taroni white silk satin dress by Cardin that we got to see.

We saw one of my favourites from Atelier Versace, an embroidered patchwork design on chiffon. It is from the fall 2002 collection.

And had such a lovely story to accompany a Ossie Clark two piece set of a tunic and pair of long, flared trousers screenprinted with Celia Birtwell design.

We also got to see a Pierre Balmain, beautiful navy dress with cutouts.

I’ve added a little bonus of a sneak peek at the Sybil Connolly dress. In the 1950s, the Irish fashion designer created a completely unique hand pleated linen technique that made her iconic. She was very protective of her technique. Good on her. She wouldn’t teach people how to do it. And she said, I’m going to take this secret to my grave.

We also had a brief look at Lacroix, Christian Lacroix. The team called it the mad dress. It was from the autumn winter 2000 / 2001 collection, it’s sort of a mix of baroque meets 80s playfulness.

In 2018, I got to see the dress that Halle Berry wore to collect her Oscar by an Israeli designer called Elie Saab. I spotted it on the rack at the 2025 event. Even though they didn’t get a chance to pull it out for us to have a look.

The third part of my visit to London involved fabric shopping.

If you come to London specifically for fabric shopping, I generally recommend going somewhere fun like Liberty, which is quite an experience, or going to Goldhawk Road, which is a long stretch that has fabric shops on each side of the road, so you can really maximise your visit.

Goldhawk Road also has lots of lovely cafes and coffee shops so you can refuel as you go along. And there’s some amazing bargains to be had. I didn’t have time to go to Goldhawk Road this time, so I went to another favourite, which is Walthamstow Market. This long street has a market down the middle that is there every day, and it includes The Man Outside Sainsbury’s, affectionately known as “TMOS”. His fabric stall can be a great place to find deadstock fabric, from ready to wear shops. And there’s a section of, like, fancy fabrics too. I nearly bought this lemon print crepe, but in the end I kept walking. There are a number of fabric shops on either side of the street. These are mostly African wax print and beaded laces, etc. but at the end of the street is one of my favourite – Saeed’s.

It’s a lovely shop with fun décor, chandeliers and wallpaper, and it’s actually two big long rooms. I found some great pieces here in the past. I ended up having a lovely chat with Saeed and got so distracted that I nearly missed my train home. But let me show you what I got.

This textured red is a silk cotton mix. And can you believe I got it for £3 a metre? It’s got a beautiful drape, and I got three metres for something fabulous with gathered tiers. It’s incredible. It was reduced from £20, and I was so incredibly torn between a mint colourway and the red. I think I should have bought them both at that price.

I don’t know what I was thinking. But the red is definitely one that I’m going to wear more often. Because I needed to hit the minimum card price, which is £10, and that was only £3 a metre, I thought I better buy something else. And I found this lovely hot pink cotton lawn. It was reduced from £6 to £2 a metre, and it could be a great blouse or dress with a slip underneath. I’m very excited. I think the colour is so fun. And I don’t often buy plain fabrics!

I hope you enjoyed this look at my exciting London adventure. Let me know in the comments. Which bit was your favourite? The Liberty Patchwork exhibit, the couture inside out garments or the fabric shopping. I’ll be back again soon with another video. See you then!