Some fabrics are just pretty. Others carry four hundred years of design history in every repeat — and Riley Blake Designs' Liberty Tudor Celebration Quilt Nouveau is firmly in the second camp. Printed in the Liberty Fabrics tradition, this Arts & Crafts style botanical takes its cue from a hand-painted artwork discovered in the Liberty archive: delicate swirling branches adorned with stylised carnations, lilies, acorns, and heart-shaped leaves, with tiny strawberries tucked in as a quiet nod to William Morris's beloved Strawberry Thief design. It is the kind of print that rewards a quilter who slows down and lets the fabric do the talking.
What Is Liberty Lasenby Cotton?
Liberty Fabrics are traditionally screen printed onto a soft cotton base known as Lasenby, a fine, smooth cotton suited to craft projects, apparel, and classic patchwork quilting. The Quilt Nouveau colorway of this print comes on 100% cotton at a standard quilting width of 43"/44", sold by the yard — so it behaves like the quilting cottons you already know how to cut, piece, and press. What sets it apart is the printing: Liberty's screen-printing tradition produces an exceptionally crisp, fine-lined design with a soft, fluid drape that you can feel the moment you unfold a cut.
Reading the Print
The Tudor Celebration design is a trailing botanical — a meandering, all-over layout of swirling branches rather than a regimented grid. Arts & Crafts style florals like this one share DNA with William Morris's 19th-century designs: natural forms, stylised rather than photographic, repeated in a rhythm that reads as texture from across the room and reveals detail up close. The tiny strawberries are a deliberate homage to Morris's Strawberry Thief, the most famous botanical print in English design history. Knowing that backstory does not change how you cut the fabric, but it changes how you plan the quilt — this is a print worth featuring, not chopping into anonymity.
Design Choices That Let the Print Shine
Busy florals ask for breathing room. Consider these approaches:
Large-scale blocks. A trailing botanical needs space to meander. Blocks finished at 8 inches or larger keep the branches intact and let the repeat read as intended. Smaller piecing — 2-inch squares, say — will reduce this print to confetti and lose the charm you are paying for.
Featured panels and borders. Cut generous lengths for wide outer borders, sashing, or the backs of quilts; a full half-yard fussy-cut for a quilt's center medallion can anchor an entire design. Quilt Nouveau is a versatile colorway, so it bridges both vintage-feeling and contemporary palettes.
Contrast with solids. Let the print do the visual work and pair it with quiet companions. Solid cottons in tones pulled from the print — deep greens from the leaves, warm reds from the strawberries, creams from the background — give the eye somewhere to rest and make the botanical pop by comparison.
Cutting and Sewing Tips
A fine Liberty base handles a little differently from a standard quilting cotton. Press with a medium iron rather than full heat, and consider starching lightly before cutting — the softer drape can shift under the rotary cutter. Because the print is directional in a trailing sense, decide up front whether the branches should all run the same way in your blocks or be deliberately scrappy; both work, but mixing them accidentally looks like a mistake.
If you are fussy-cutting motifs — a carnation cluster here, a strawberry sprig there — cut a template window from a clear ruler or an old rotary mat so you can position each cut exactly. You will use more fabric this way, so buy an extra quarter yard if fussy-cutting is the plan.
Project Ideas Beyond Quilts
The Lasenby base was made for more than patchwork. Its soft hand and fine print suit garments (a blouse or summer skirt in this botanical would be unmistakably Liberty), heirloom-style baby items, lined tote bags, and home decor like cushion covers and table runners — anywhere a fluid, fine-line print earns its keep.
Care
Care is straightforward: machine wash cold and tumble dry low. If the fabric will live in a quilt that gets washed regularly, pre-washing keeps shrinkage consistent with the rest of your project. A quick press after washing restores the crisp printed surface.
A fabric with this much history deserves more than a cameo in a scrap bin. Give the Tudor Celebration Quilt Nouveau room to breathe — in a feature block, a wide border, or a whole-cloth accent — and it will reward you with the depth and movement that only a Liberty-style botanical can deliver.
Shop the Liberty Tudor Celebration Quilt Nouveau 01667446C 44"/45" Fabric Per Yard at Linda's Electric Quilters.
