There's just something in French - is not it? - It can be seen in their decoration, their food, their joie de vivre.
Some years ago I had my daughter in France to experience the culture firsthand. We found there as much as we love Italy. There is something so wonderful about the French mystic.
You can grow the same chicken, dairy breeds of goats like to eat, and share the same food we do, but their style house makes me long after the end of my daysthere.
Sunny hills, lush fields of lavender, warm breezes year. I lived through the French town since the day we came back and I wrote this article is no different, although I used to be focused on textiles are decorated in French. But it is all over the country so rich in backyard landscape fabric, but rather, toile, in particular.
A reader asked me just last week: "What are you talking about when you say the canvas?"
Toile is a variety of materials used in both economic andelegant. The same word is used by a printing technique that seems almost engraved or stamped to describe the fabric. Toile can be used in everything from velvet pressed to see a thin sheet of cotton. The structure most often shows a scene as the scene yard or two lovers embracing in a field of flowers.
Toile is usually only two tones. The survey and the background. The most common is the white / black, but you can also use this printed fabrics in every shade -dramatic or demure.
Toile first hit the decorating scene in the 1700s. It showed up in curtains, wallpaper, tableclothes and bedding of the elite. Quickly the style moved into the homes of all income brackets and over 300 years later it is still a French staple in home decorating.
As I write this there is a huge increase in French Country decorating across the United States and Canada. As more of us focus our energy on the home front - either we're getting too old to go out much anymore (aging Baby Boomers), or too poor due to the recession.
The French know that love and happiness exists no matter of age or income or circumstance. That feeling is infused into our bedrooms and living rooms the very first day we bring home our toile pillowcases or throw pillows.
If you love the romanticism of French country decorating but can't decide on a particular color scheme, look no further than some of the gorgeous photos of French villas in decorating books as well as travel websites. When we visited Villefrance, Paris and Nice we found beautifully faded villas and buildings in all colors - each one of them sun-drenched and faded. Not as brilliant or 'sweet' as pastels these colors were more reminiscent of your favorite demin jeans that have been well worn and faded over the years.
The fabrics that hang in the windows of these buildings, or adorn the tables and sofas within the walls, can be of almost any design that pleases you as long as the colors are either brilliant and fresh or faded and demure. High or low contrast - very little in between.
