Toile prints have blossomed anew in home decor in recent years - those bucolic scenes of sheperdesses and milkmaids and open-air picnics in the French countryside.

Now a New Orleanian is giving old-fashioned toile a New Orleans twist.

Actor Bryan Batt and his partner of 18 years, Tom Cianfichi, have created toile that will delight anyone who knows what it means to miss New Orleans.

Batt stars as ad agency art director Salvatore Romano in the hot new AMC series "Mad Men." Speaking last week from Los Angeles, where "Mad Men" had just wrapped up its first season, Batt said that four years ago, he and Cianfichi opened Hazelnut, a home-decor boutique in New Orleans, uptown on Magazine Street. (The shop is named for Batt's late grandmother, a dancing-school teacher whose maiden name was Hazel Nuss.)

They wanted to offer a signature item, Batt said, and one day in New York he was staring at his shower curtain with a black and white Asian toile theme, when inspiration struck. "I thought, why not New Orleans? Its architecture is unique, it's beautiful, it's unique to itself."

Based on Batt's sketches, their friend, New York artist Sonia O'Mara, designed the 29-inch toile print with scenes of the city - St. Louis Cathedral, the steamboat Natchez, the St. Charles Avenue streetcar and the French Quarter's famed wrought iron balconies and archways and courtyard fountains.

The toile is printed on a linen-cotton blend and sewn by hand into pillows, bed linens, tea towels and shower curtains, trays, tissue boxes, tote bags, keepsake boxes, desk pads, aprons, and more.

The fabric is available in five different colors. Four are on an ivory background - a delphinium blue called "Delphine," "Palmetto" green, claret and black - and the print is also available in chocolate brown on a natural flax-colored background called "Café au Lait."

The fabrics also are sold by the yard, which Batt says has been the line's most popular item.

How about wallpaper? The busy actor says they are still looking for a manufacturer. "It's all been quite a learning experience."

Shown here are a wastebasket ($52) and table linens (napkins and scalloped, laminated placemats, $15 apiece). for more information, go to www.hazelnutneworleans.com, or call 504-891-2424.

NANCY SCHOEFFLER