“Making things runs in my family,
and always has”
A story with a personal connection to Liberty
Hello, I’m Rosie.
I grew up as one of 12 children. We never got to watch a TV programme without the knitting machine running in the background while my mum made our clothes. As a child I wanted shop-bought things like everyone else. But I look back now and think how remarkable it was, what she managed to do.
Her mum was the same. My grandmother made dresses for me and my sisters, and I didn't know until later that those hand-me-down dresses were made from Liberty fabric, bought from a shop in York.
But that connection came back to me, years later.
A shared home with Liberty print manufacturing
A few years before I started Ramble & Rose, I was teaching textiles at a school in Carlisle when a student teacher brought in a box of fabric scraps from Stead McAlpin, the Carlisle mill that had been printing Liberty fabrics for decades. I picked one up and had such an emotional reaction. A bit of digging told me why.
These were the fabrics my grandmother had been buying all along. I'd been wearing them as a child without ever knowing it.
It felt like coming home to something that had always been a part of me.
My laces also came from a link to my past
Laces are now my most popular product, and they also came from a memory.
When I was a student, I'd go to Edinburgh to visit my sister, walk down Cockburn Street, and stop at a shop called Ground Control to pick up tartan or rainbow laces for my Docs. Bright, interesting laces that the high street didn't bother with. At some point they stopped being easy to find. I had five pairs of Doc Martens and nothing worth putting in them.
So I started making my own.
Since then I've really worked on the quality: the stitching, the fabric sealant I use to give them strength and make them stainproof. There's been an evolution, responding to what people wanted. Around five hundred pairs later, I'm still making them.
A passionate but picky lover of Liberty
The fabric for these laces, and everything I make, comes from my Liberty trade account.
That means I buy direct, 10 metres minimum, once a year, chasing down the prints I love before they're discontinued. Liberty doesn't keep most designs in print for long; once they stop making it, it's gone.
So I buy remnants when I can find them and I use every single scrap. Some of my favourite patterns have only a few centimetres left and I'm still finding ways to use them.
I don't love everything Liberty produces, though.
What I'm looking for — and what I think you're probably looking for too — is detailed, fine-patterned, quirky designs. Floral prints, unusual colourways. The kind that sometimes just jumps out and grabs you. When I find one that does, I can't wait to get back to the workshop.
From making to packaging
Every order that leaves here is packed in recycled brown card, paper tape, no plastic. Inside: tissue paper, a bow, three stickers, a handmade card, and a handwritten note in a big coloured Sharpie. I do it because people don't always realise they're buying from just one person.
The thing you ordered was literally made by me, fighting off my cats Lizzie or Sherlock, while I turned a Liberty print into your pair of laces.
Ramble & Rose on the road
I sell my laces online, along with all my products, but every month or so I pack up my little Panda car and head out to sell at fairs.
That's where my business really comes alive.
People come up to my stall to show me they're still wearing my laces. Some have tracked down where I'm going to be and turned up especially.
Back home, I read the reviews (over 163 five-star reviews on Etsy since 2020) and feel the same thing. More than half my customers come back for a second order, and some come back far more than that.
It feels really special to have that relationship with people.
Sustainable, small and satisfied
I've never wanted to grow Ramble & Rose into something big. I quite like being a micro-business of one.
I like knowing every order that leaves here. And I like that when you buy something from Ramble & Rose, you're buying something I made in Carlisle, from fabric I chose because I loved it. But also because it's part of my own story, and the story of this city.
If you'd like to meet me in person, you can find out where I'll be next.
Or if you're ready to have a peek at what I make, pop over to my shop.
Lots of love,
Rosie xx
