Holly Blog

My Favorite Things...200...The Big Two Oh-Oh!

Day 15 of 16

 

The ric rac & ribbon is from my buddy Adam...(quilt shop owners take note!) The Forget-Me-Not millinery flowers are from my personal stash...but I have seen something very similar recently at Michaels.

Well Ladies, it's my day today, and a bit of a coincidence, actually...It's my 200th blog post. I have to laugh, when I think of what my webmaster said about blogging a couple of years ago, when I wanted to add a blog onto my website.  Something to the effect of "be careful with that and make sure you really want to do it and that you won't run out of things to say".  LOL...

Actually, I only run out of time, not things to show & tell.  I have pictures from trips and projects and things that inspire me waiting in files to show you...

Anyhoo, I designed the panel to expand the "circle of friends"...that is, people who liked the Dolly Dresses quilt from last fall & who would like to work with the Dolly Dresses fabrics, but like me, don't have the time to do all of the applique'.  Tick-tock, I say.

So before I even was finished with the dolly dresses panel fabric, I called the Beth "the Beauty Queen" Hayes (it's the cheekbones) at McCall's Quilting.  What I love about working with Beth is that she has even less time to waste than I do.  I send her a picture, she loves it, she hates it...I get instant feed back...Tick Tock.

So the embellished Dolly Dress Up panel quilt that was shown in the LakeHouse booth at Fall Quilt market, (which I showed in a previous blog back in October)...Is going to be in the McCall's Quilting April 2010 issue that hits the newsstands in February.  The timing is perfect, because the Dolly Dresses 2 fabrics will be getting to the stores in early April...For those of you with scraps left over from Doll Dresses 1, I used a lot of scraps from that collection in my quilt...Not to worry though, DD 1, 2 & 3...they all go together, it's a mix & match thing...like Garanimals...LOL

Meantime, it's time for you to give it your best shot...Remember the scene in the movie "Notting Hill"...Hugh Grant's character is sitting around the dinner table with friends?  Each of them had to tell a story about why they deserved the last brownie...Well now's the time...Give it your best shot & tell me why you deserve to win the Dolly Dress Up panels (months earlier than anyone else) from our secret stash here at the studio. 

Leave your story below and I'll announce the winners of the Dolly Dress Up panels tomorrow.

Make Me Laugh!...Back in a Flash,

H2

My Favorite Things...184...More Dress Up

With references like this so easy to download off the internet, it wasn't difficult to be inspired...

We started with Ric's version of Le Roi de Soleil (the Sun King). He came up with this fabulous wig based on pictures of hairstyles from that era.  There are over sized disposable plastic beer cups taped to the skull cap part of his wig under all of the paper curls...

Ric's daughter Erica is responsible for all of the make up. The "neck injury" is a reference to the guillotine's effect during the French Revolution...Ric's cape is a combination of a scalloped collar cut with piking shears, and dozens of ruched paper strips on the front of the cape. The little epaulets on the shoulder area of the cape were placed there to make his movement easier.

Next is Patrick, vogueing for the camera just after his make up was applied.

We made his breasts the same way as the skull cap for the wigs..."a la Martha".  Then we taped them to his Haz Mat suit.  You can see that his cumberbund is missing, but this gives you a good idea of how his garment was draped.  Believe it or not, this would have been much more difficult to pull off in fabric.  Newsprint has so much more body than most fabrics...we "pre-scrunched" the paper so that it was more pliable to work with as we did the draping.

Here's me just before the party, getting cinched into my party dress, by now you all know how much I love scalloped edges...

There are only a few pieces to my dress--the skirt with left & right over drapes in the front, the waistband that hid most of the unsightly details, the shawl collar & two paper rosettes to adorn the bottom of the shawl where it is taped together.  We scalloped the edges of my Haz Mat sleeves and created a cute little fold back cuff with rubber bands.

I'm so glad that Ric insisted that we all get into the spirit of Halloween this year and go "all out" with our costumes.  While I love Halloween, I have never been really big on actually participating in the spectacle of it all...It was a laugh riot from beginning to end.

Hope you all were as inspired by all of this as much as I was.

Back in two shakes...

;º)  H2

PS A new blog-a-thon is coming soon!

My Favorite Things...183...Playing Dress Up

It all started a couple of weeks ago with Ric telling me about a segment on Martha Stewart, where she showed an easy way to make a Halloween wig with a plastic bag, some tape and some paper.  Ric's a clever one, and before I knew it he was making the base for a wig.  As luck would have it, the wig looked very French...very Louis "something"...very Marie Antoinette.

That conversation lead to a discussion of the amazing paper dress competition that they have on Project Runway...(and the uber-amazing dresses that they made a few weeks ago).  You can replay the entire paper dress episode by going to myLifetime.com/ProjectRunway

We then started prowling the internet for pictures of Marie Antoinette-era costumes to have a better idea of what men and women actually wore back then.  We discussed doing flat paper-doll-like dresses, full dresses, and then we settled on dresses that would be a "facade", for comedic effect...We did not finish the back of our outfits.  Instead we let our "undergarments" show.  In this case, the undergarments that we used were Tyvek Has-Mat Suits, that Ric picked up a the local hardware store. These adult-sized "one-sies" were what we taped the paper parts of the costume pieces to. 

The whole process was a lot of trial and error, but we had a lot of laughs the whole way through.

I'll have more snapshots from our Halloween eve in my next few blog...Fromthe  ghoulish make up applied to our faces & necks by Ric's daughter Erica, close ups of our outfits, last-minute fans to complete "the look", etc...

So y'all come back now, y'hear?  There's lots more to show & tell.

Back in two shakes...

;º)  H2

 

Favorite Things...45a...You're it!

It turns out that my blog-etiquette & blog-worldliness is somewhat suspect at this point in time.  The rules of the middle-name-tagging-game are that I was supposed to tag one person for every letter in my middle name. Thanks for the tutoring ElizaPam, & thank goodness it's only 4 letters...

So I'm "not it" but you are...Kimberly, Anna, Brenda & May Britt

Happy Labor Day All from a "picture-postcard-blue-sky-day" at the Boulders...aka LHDG HQ.

This view is from the stone patio...(we are about 20 feet above the lake here)

This is my photographer's assistant, Jasmine, looking for a rubbin'
(She's the Rescue Remedy kitty, BTW!)

Back in two shakes...H2

My Favorite Things...45...Getting Tagged?

Thank goodness Elizabeth sent me a note telling me that I had been tagged on her site.  I don't "get out much" during QM countdown...that's why I'm available at 9:03 est to perform for you now like a barking seal...ar ar ar

D---Demanding, Designer & Daddy's girl (still missing you every day!)

A---Anal, Artistic & Almost Antique (anything 50 years or older is an antique, right?)

N---Nutsy, Neurotic & Nimble (I still put both feet behind my head)

A---Ardent, Aesthetic & Asymmetrical (wouldn't you like to know?)

Does this remind anyone besides me of passing notes in class?

Back in two shakes...H2

OH, and PKM, you share the same middle name as my beloved Sophie Marie!

She was the best dog a gal could ever hope for...