A Famine of Roses, a Tussie mussie of Toile.

It's sunshining but it's windy. The temperature has risen...doesn't it always after a Bank Holiday? It's almost as if the weather waits for everyone to go back to work and then pulls out all the stops.

Best thing to do, I think..is work the bank holidays and have the rest of the week off....;)  That'll do it!

So, owing to the weather being so horrible, I have hardly any roses blooming in the garden as I had hoped. After all it is Flaming June and the beginning of the rose season. Well, it should be. I have one tiny little white rose out, just one bloom - a miniature one ( Frothy). I think that has only come out because it's sheltered by a lot of other plants. Brave little mite.

I am suffering then, with 'Rosacareo'... a famine of Roses - a deep seated psychological need for the blossom of the rosebush accompanied by the smell of them.

So what can I do?

Make my own of course.

 A little rose, touched with pink chalk.

I made them in Mulberry paper which isn't something I use very often and I shall be adding them to a fabric project soon.
The fabric I shall be using is this.....

A lovely blue and cream pastoral Toile de Jouy. Do you know about Toile de Jouy?

It is a fabric style invented in the latter part of the 18th century in Jouy in France. It usually depicts jolly rural folk doing jolly rural things. Of course it's a sanitized version of rural life in France at this time. Heavens! The actual truth was about as far as you can get from the pictures lovingly drawn onto the first Toiles.
On Toile fabrics we find, amongst other things, shepherds sitting amongst a riot of flowers tootling gently on their flutes. Their well endowed ladies ( in dresses they could NEVER have afforded ), sit decorously making daisy chains, feeding lambs, cuddling ( clean and healthy ) dogs or tripping lightly under the boughs of blossoming trees holding the hands of sweetly dressed and well nourished children. In the background are rivers full of game birds, water mills turning obediently, whilst swallows swoop and dive to the eaves.
Hmmmm.
Let them eat cake eh?

What price the French Revolution?

But this Idyllic world of the Toile has a HUGE appeal to us now.... us with our hustle and bustle of 21st century life; with the noise, the dirt, the lack of decorum in behaviour, the 'In your faceness' of everything, the paucity of grace and poise, the very real lack of beauty. This is, of course why people have the hankering for the nineteen- fifties, at the moment too, which is seen as a Golden Age, an age of common sense and order, when females were ladies and men were gentlemen.

Everything comes round again doesn't it?

I'm glad there is a revival in Toile de Jouy. It's so brilliant for crafty projects. Mine came from a book of old GP and J Baker swatches. They get thrown out when new books arrive at the Interior Designers. What a waste...so I bagged some. In the next few weeks I'll be using them in different ways.
I shall make something special with it, for a inaugural GIVEAWAY on my new Facebook page for Gather Ye Rosebuds.
Yes I have added GYR to my Facebook list so those who would like to follow there can do so easily.
Gather Ye Rosebuds Facebook
Do go and have a look.

I shall be making a Tussie Mussie in Toile.

Oh...you might not be familiar with what a tussie mussie is?

Originally, in the days of smelly open sewers, poor personal hygiene, in the days before the electric washing machine and the detergent to go in them, when REAL shepherds smelled of sheep, when children were filthy all the time and houses were home to fleas and lice, a tussie mussie might have been a Jolly Good Thing.

 This image comes from Flowers for Canada

Naturally only the wealthy could afford them. They were, when first we hear about them in the early 15th century, little posies of sweet smelling flowers tied tightly with ribbon or string. A nosegay. They would be the sort of flowers which had strong perfumes, roses, pinks, carnations, lavender, rue...you get the idea.
The epithet tussie mussie also applied to the little pomanders that people would stick under their noses when travelling around the smelly town. These might be filled with a pot pourri of dried flowers mixed with spices and herbs and they were thought - certain combinations of plants - to ward off plague.
Of course they did nothing of the sort.... but it was a nice thought. You could die with a smile on your face and carnations in your nostrils.

No one seems to know precisely when the words were first coined. The words were around in the 15th century.
Tussock comes to mind...when we look at the original bouquets, as they were semi circular humps. Tussock is small hill. Tussie can also mean a collection of flowers.

Mussie? Well in certain parts of Canada..it's a horrible monster though I don't think we shall go there.
In Scotland it's a wee mousie and it can be said that, in certain quarters the word mussie applies to a higher power...gods and goddesses.
But I think it's much more likely to be from the Anglo Saxon mose - moss.

When you make a flower tussie mussie you wrap the stems in moss to keep them fresh.

I'm not going to wrap mine in moss. It would be a toossie messy then. :) But I am going to fill it with goodies. You see a Tussie Mussie is also, nowadays, a cone of paper or some other material filled with pretty things and decorated to the hilt with ribbons, lace and flowers, like this one....

If you go to Facebook and LIKE Gather Ye Rosebuds, you will be in with a chance to win my Fabric Tussie Mussie plus...the contents.

Some antique lace,
Some ribbon,
Some old buttons
Some hand made millinery flowers
Some hand printed paper and some Vintage images for cutting out.

Some of my silk flowers
and some little embellishments which will do nicely whether you are a card maker, a box maker, a candle decorator. They would be useful for lots of crafts - and for making your own tussie mussie too.




Off you go!

I'm going to check my Rosebuds...can't gather any yet ;)