A ruffly eye glass case (with one of my buttons) and a black and white ruffled scarf - merino and silk.

A Few Loose Ends

Here are some of the flower pins for the flower dress - I'm doing a ton in the periwinkle and mauves.

This is a belt to which I've added three airy organza flowers to.

This was a pillow I had to take apart to stitch the flowers. It was Embellished a while ago before I knew that the components would pull off if tugged - and that exactly what someone did as it made it's travels around.

Another seamless felted bag - a favorite this time. A silk print felted onto a lovely orange merino; it's going to have a felted button too :-)

Marbelizing class

The piece with the black is my favorite - the pale green and blue come in at a pretty close second. I can't wait until I have more time to try my ideas.

This class was quite a learning experience. Elin Noble is a fabulous teacher and we spent 2 1/2 glorious days just playing with paints and fabric. I got rid of the pieces I didn't like but I love all of these.

Three Bags in Progress

This little fanciful bag started out as a scarf that I just didn't like, but I LOVE it as a bag - I just cut it up and stitched it together again; quite funky and a little dressy, The inside is the palest fulled wool and has a couple of pockets.

This yummy wool felt bag has pieces of clamped and dyed silk embedded in it - I picked up the wool from the MD S&W last year and it wasn't identified. It is very soft (not merino) with lovely bumps and is felted very, very well. I still have to stitch the handles on some of these. The lining is a lovely complimentary vibrant pink hydrangea on cream (with pockets of course).

This quite large seamless, felt bag has pockets inside and some Embellished design/machie embroidery on the flap.

Buttons

I purchased a button machine from Hope Yoder when I came back from KMIS in Tampa to make some covered buttons. Once I saw Hope's samples, I knew I just had to have one of these machines; it is going to come in so handy for my Embellisher scraps and marbelized fabric (I just took a fabulous marbelizing class from Elin Noble last weekend). Oh my gosh, this machine is such fun, so fast and has very professional results! There is a very small learning curve and then it's "you go girl!" Fast and easy - my kind of tool. I had a ball using it and so did my 10 and 13 year-old granddaughters without any help from Nana Margo (my Mom is Nana Bell). In fact, I had to pry them away from it or they'd have used up all my supplies!

Flower ball gown

This was a rather "slinky" table top very curvy, female shape with a basket/metal base covered in pink velvet that I bought from a Valentine display at HomeGoods to use as a display prop when I go to Arlington, Texas. I want my booth to have a soft "watercolor" feel and am going to make tons of flowers that I will pin all over her skirt (if I ever get them finished). It had some white boa around the top and the waist - that was the first to go. The space is rather small so lots of things will have to go "vertical."

Invitation

http://www.marthapullen.com/market/2010sewingmarket.pdf

You are probably wondering why I've not been posting lately - well, I was invited to be a "Celebrity Speaker" by Marth Pullen at her big event in Arlington, Texas, in May which means an hour long PP presentation. I'll also have a booth there (never done that before) where I'll sell a few felted items and my fiber/snippet packs. There isn't much time to prepare so I've been busy every spare moment coming up with ideas for the booth and doing research. I was very excited when I learned that my friend, Evy Hawkins, http://www.abitofstitch.com/ will be there too. Evy has written a great article for Belle Armoire (there is a link on her site) and so kindly mentioned me! Evy was my host when I taught in SC a few years back and is one of the nicest and most creative people I've met.

I do promise to post a few pictures within the next day or so.