Neighborhood nature

One of our goals for this year was to start walking around our local world on a regular basis as a means of getting more exercise in our too sedentary life (raking rocks is good for the shoulders but not the legs). 

As we live on a crest, there's not a whole lot of variety.  Thus, the activity has evolved into searching a more aggressive hike around the local hills on Sunday afternoons.  I thought I'd show you what the lower Alps can look like in springtime.

Passage of time

Anybody who ever visited us in Paris has had the pleasure of meeting our next door neighbors, who have become our dearest friends over all the years we've lived in France.  While we don't get up to Paris much anymore, they have a vacation home just a couple of hours away from us down here; thus, we still manage to see them from time to time.

Recently, we celebrated his birthday, and I thought you'd like to both see our old friends again plus see a simple little French celebration.

Unlined jacket tutorial

As a complement to the summer dress I just made as part of an ongoing sewing contest, I made this interesting casual jacket.  While I doubt I'll ever make the included dress, I really liked the design of this jacket (trying to see past the model wearing it in my favorite color,  and then I did it in the same thing!) and used this opportunity to try it out.

Again, I thought I would point out some of the techniques I used outside of the typical pattern directions.  Perhaps you may find some of them useful, too.

A summer's dress tutorial

I am in the process of sewing a nine-piece wardrobe for another contest!  After taking a sewing break for a number of years, this time around I'm trying to incorporate a lot of little extras I mostly didn't mess with in my sewing heyday when rearing an active family and trying to keep customers happy. 

I thought I would explain some of those techniques used on the dress of this pattern, Butterick 5619.  I've already made the jacket and the skirt, so now it's time to do something with the dress pattern, too.

Popular pattern participation

Remember the sewing contest I mentioned I entered?  A sewing site I follow has regular contests with various themes, most of which don't interest me or fit my personal needs.  However, this last contest involved using a specific pattern from a specific list, which was a compilation of the most popular patterns from the past three years.  I happened to have three of them, so I entered one item from each.  After a week of voting, the results are in!