Travelling

I’ve been away on quite a few trips lately and the past few days I spent in Paris with a friend who is staying there for a month. We walked a lot and as we both have been to Paris more than once before, we didn’t do the regular tourist visit, except for the visit to the Musée d’Orsay, a beautiful building itself. It’s an old train station. We visited the temporary exhibition “Impressionism and fashion”. The two pictures here are from the website of the museum. Taking photos at the exhibition was not allowed. I loved the way exhibit was organized with a general introduction and separate rooms for “women at home”, “artists and men of the world”, “enjoying the open air”.  There was one display of a pattern. Unfortunately it figured in the background of other items and it couldn’t be seen completely. I would have liked a copy of that pattern to see what it really was and how it went together. Some construction indications (letters) were given so that you could see which parts had to be sewn together. Like the numbers on BurdaStyle magazine patterns nowadays.

It was so nice to see the painting on the right again. I remember vividly seeing that painting for the first time on my first visit to Paris, back in 1981! Then it was in the Jeu de Paume, a small museum where the impressionist paintings were exhibited before the collection went to musée d’Orsay. It brought back some memories. As did some other paintings as well.

It’s strange though, that now the focus was on fashion, you also look at the paintings with a different eye, you see different things.

 

We didn’t do other sewing related things, my friend is not sewing at all. But she knows I do and knew about this store (La Droguerie) with buttons and thought I would like it. I did. The store has buttons, a lot of beads, yarn for knitting and trim. To my surprise they sold liberty fabric bias tape. I’ve never seen that before and didn’t know it existed. They have quite a collection and other trims as well. I do like liberty fabric but most prints are not “me”. I saw possibilities in this bias tape as accent on a plain blouse and bought 3 varieties. I bought a few buttons too. There will be a blouse with some liberty accents in my near future.

 

Hope to have my sewing mojo back soon.