As promised, here is more of the low-down on the recent trip to Paris. We travelled by EuroStar from London:
It worked beautifully, and we traversed the Channel Tunnel with minimum disruption and inconvenience (unlike my previous experience in a coach, where I felt like a sardine). Arrival at the Gard du Nord in beautiful sunshine allowed us to enjoy the decorative grandeur of the station architecture against the blue sky:
Our hotel (‘Hotel Welcome’) was situated just off the Boulevard Saint Germain. It was small but perfectly formed! The lift was probably the smallest in Europe (designed to fit two people and one shopping bag in), just look at the width of the floor:
But it took us to our fourth floor room, also small, but very French:
And from the window, a perfect rooftops view of Paris:
This cafe was just a couple of doors away:
This fruit and vegetable shop was just down the street:
And these are the window displays in the macaron shop next door but one:
Opposite was an ice-cream shop, open until all hours, so that was good, too. The same street hosted a street market while we were there and the cheese stall was everything you could wish for:
We included a visit to the famous ‘Galeries Lafayette’ department store:
As part of our Paris experience, we decided to take tea in the ‘Cafe Angelina’ within the store and shared a tiny but exquisite lemon tart to go with our two pots of tea:
Another wonderful find on the shopping front was ‘Petit Pain’, a small shop of delightful items at 10 bis, rue Yvonne le Tac, 75018 Paris:
Inside was a myriad of items made from their fresh and colourful fabrics:
Since I couldn’t take the whole shop home, I settled for some fabric-covered buttons and a pack of patchwork fabrics:
And here’s a peek at the contents:
These fifty pieces are destined for a quilt all of their very own…
And talking of fabric for patchwork, here is the scene last Saturday at the most recent of my ‘Craft Saturdays’ at The Sanctuary, Darlington, where seven participants came together for a day on ‘Machine-Stitched Patchwork’.
Choosing the fabric colours is the most fun, but we also covered selecting a suitable wadding, which fabric weight to use, marking, measuring, cutting and joining patchwork pieces, using the sewing machine and more.
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Amanda Jane Textiles 