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Spring Flower Basket started when I found a nice wicker basket with a handle, painted pale green, at the Dorcas Thrift Shop in Cary. At the same time, I responded to an ad on Craig's List for fabric by the pound, and bought 25 pounds of a quilter's stash in colors that worked for me. Based on the size of my 25# pile compared to what was left, the stash must have been about 2500 pounds. That's a lot of fabric. I selected a handful of pastel quilting cottons from the new fabrics and added some pastels I'd acquired through...

On a recent pass through the Dorcas Thrift Shop in Cary, NC, I found a striking silver plated champagne cooler, badly tarnished but otherwise in good condition. It needed a huge arrangement of flowers, and I had been looking for a container for a set of recycled remnants. The first step was to make sure the flowers I had created would work with the container. I protected the bottom of the champagne cooler so that the wire stems would not scratch the silver plate, and loosely grouped a selection of flowers. (The vivid magenta flowers in the picture above didn't...

We had the flowers at the 2018 Fat Cat Art Fest on June 9-10, 2018. Warm Saturday, and a great show!  Details below the poster. 10 artists, great food. 758 Ravens Lane off 902 south of Pittsboro, NC. 10-6 Saturday, 12-6 Sunday. Gretchen Niver showed cold and warm glass; Kate Ladd had paintings. As usual, Gretchen had fabulous food both days: The Forever Flowers looked pretty good in the new display racks. Silver Hydrangeas (front right), Spring Basket (mid-picture), and Turquoise & Copper Wreath (center rear, below Regimental Wreath) were new this show. Beth Bales watercolors at the lower left;...

I'll have the flowers at the Fat Cat Art Fest on June 9-10, 10-6 on Saturday, 12-6 on Sunday. If you're in Pittsboro, stop by and visit! 10 artists will be in Gretchen's hanger at 758 Ravens Lane, part of the Eagles Landing subdivision just south of town off 902.

We took the flowers out to the Front Porch Art Walk in Raleigh's Oakwood neighborhood on the Saturday before Mother's Day this year. It was a beautiful warm day--the first 90-degree day of the year--and I had a tent space that was in the shade all day. Someone saw the paper poppies backlit by the sun and suggested offering them as a backdrop for wedding photography, so I changed the listing to sell them as a group. The spinner was new this show, too, and the flowers look much better against white tent walls rather than green treetops. Look for...