Petite Patisseries

A lemon tart is my very favorite treat from a French patisserie. So much of the pucker left to the lemon taste, and the buttery crisp of the crust, umm umm good. I love all the attention to detail in each dessert, each little treat is so elaborately decorated. Here is a picture of a patisserie in the Alsace region of France, in Colmar, which is a gorgeous town of half-timbered houses and small, twisting, cobbled streets. Also here is picture of the small wall hanging that I just finished and have hung in Em's room. The design is from Sew Pretty Homestyle/Tilda's Hus.

Beautiful Matryoshka

Emily painted a Russian doll for her room. We haven't mounted it yet but it turned out so well. I can hardly wait to see it in her room.

Slippers

Here are my fancy new slippers that I made from the book "Sew Pretty Homestyle". My husband just laughed when he saw them...a little too maharajah for him I guess. They are very ladylike compared to my usual slippers--LL Bean style, but I still like them. I used a non-fusible interfacing which I had on hand, but that made it a bit harder to get the sole to not pucker up. I added about a 1/2 inch all around the pattern because it looked too small when I put my foot on the sole pattern piece. I would put about a 3/4 inch margin around the pattern next time. The slippers fit fine but I didn't allow myself very much of a seam allowance and this led to some problems which I had to go back and hand-sew. I didn't see any mention of whether the patterns in the book had seam allowances built into the pattern pieces or not---I would guess probably not.

Mouse & Mr. Rags

I started this little project the other day and look what I did......

I took some duck cloth and inked some little drawings onto the cloth and then stitched and stuffed. Meg, who doesn't like clowns, says Mr. Rags is too scarey but everyone seems to like the mouse. What should I name her???? Hepatica!!! (thanks, Julie)

Tildas Hus/Sew Pretty Homestyle

A sparkly day at Borders bookstore. I found a great new book that was first published in Norway and now is in English. Yeah!! The pictures and projects are pretty and fresh...I want to make the slippers right away!

More Gnome love.......

These are some little gnome paper cutouts. Meg and I found them in Switzerland a couple of years ago now, and we still can't bear to use them...what a waste! It is so hard to use these beautiful little gnomes. Maybe I could avoid all this guilt if I framed them??

Just before we moved back to the states from Germany we made several small trips to neighboring countries that we hadn't gotten to yet....we didn't want to miss them. Anyway, we dashed into and out of Lucerne, Switzerland on a long weekend and found that it is a really pretty little town. The long wooden bridge across the river is cool and the view from the church of the town and lake was beautiful. Meg and I had made it our mission when we would visit a new place to go into a regular office supply store, a store very unlikely to sell tourist pap. We didn't want a snow globe with the Lucerne skyline, we wanted idiosyncratic stuff--just like these little cutouts. Of course, we do have our share of snowglobes, etc. :-)