Know Your Riley Blake: Sewing with Liberty's Rossellie Blooms Floral
Every great fabric has a story, but few carry one as storied as this. The Liberty Tudor Celebration Rossellie Blooms is a tribute to Liberty's world-famous flower shop — the one that has graced the entrance of the iconic London store on Great Marlborough Street for generations. Drawing on curated 1930s-style archive botanicals, the print arranges dense clusters of loosely painted roses, daisies, lilies, tulips, and anemones in charming florists' buckets, the way a florist would display them at the shop door.
Like all Liberty Fabrics, it's traditionally screen printed onto soft Lasenby cotton — the base cloth Liberty is known for. That gives it a hand feel that's a step softer than standard quilting cotton, which is exactly why it's listed as suited to craft projects, apparel, and classic patchwork quilting alike. The possibilities, as the saying goes, are as endless as your imagination.
What it is
This is 100% cotton fabric, printed on Liberty's soft Lasenby cotton base and sold in 44"/45" cuts (43"/44" usable width). It's part of the Tudor Celebration collection by Riley Blake Designs, in the classic Liberty style: an archival 1930s botanical design, screen-printed with the dense, painterly detail Liberty prints are famous for. Care is simple: machine wash cold, tumble dry low.
Best uses for this print
Feature blocks and whole-cloth projects. Dense florals deserve room to bloom. Use Rossellie Blooms in larger cuts — 6" to 8" squares, center medallions, or whole-cloth quilt tops and pillow shams — so the florists' buckets and clustered blooms stay intact. It also shines as the backing fabric for a quilt: soft Lasenby cotton against the skin is a genuine upgrade.
Apparel that shows off a Liberty print. This is where the Lasenby base really earns its keep. Summer blouses, gathered skirts, kids' dresses, aprons, and kimono-style robes all drape and wear beautifully in this cotton. A Liberty floral never looks like a quilting cotton cosplaying as clothing — it reads as true apparel fabric, because that's part of what Liberty designed it to be.
Craft and gift projects. Think drawstring bags, zippered pouches, tote linings, fabric baskets, and bunting. The dense floral reads beautifully on small accessories, and a lined tote with a Rossellie Blooms interior turns an everyday bag into something special.
Cutting and piecing tips
Treat this as a medium-to-large-scale print. If you're piecing it into a quilt, pair it with small-scale coordinates or tone-on-tone blenders rather than other large florals — two big prints in one block compete instead of complementing. For patchwork, cutting 4" squares and up keeps the flower clusters recognizable; cut smaller and the print reads as a pretty blur of color (which can still work beautifully as a "rest" fabric in a scrappy quilt). For fussy-cut features — a pillow center, a bag pocket, an appliqué motif — center one of the florists' buckets for a vignette effect.
Color pairing
With roses, daisies, lilies, tulips, and anemones all in one print, the palette is inherently generous, so pull your coordinates straight from the fabric: the dominant background tone for sashing and borders, and one or two bloom colors for binding and accents. A crisp solid border — cream, white, or a green picked from the foliage — frames the density of the print and gives the eye somewhere to rest. If you're mixing it with other Tudor Celebration prints, keep them in supporting roles: blenders and small-scale coordinates, not rival florals.
Care
Machine wash cold and tumble dry low, per the fabric's rating. Pre-wash if the finished project will see frequent laundering (children's clothing, aprons, everyday quilts) so the Lasenby cotton relaxes before you cut. As with all densely printed cottons, washing with like colors the first time is a sensible precaution.
Rossellie Blooms is Liberty heritage you can sew with — a 1930s archive botanical honoring the most famous flower shop in London, printed on the soft Lasenby cotton that made Liberty prints beloved far beyond the quilting world. Whether it becomes a quilt backing, a summer dress, or the lining of the bag you carry everywhere, it's a print with a pedigree.
Shop the Liberty Tudor Celebration Rossellie Blooms 01667444A 44"/45" Fabric Per Yard at Linda's Electric Quilters.
