A 3-day Martha Pullen Event!

My Mom, Sally and I took a 3-day seminar at the Bernina shop here in Denver.  Here Sally is pictured with our certified Martha Pullen instructor, Beverly.  Behind Beverly are some of the many beautiful garments displayed around the store as samples of heirloom sewing.  We had a fabulous time! 

 We met Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 9am to 5pm.  There were 18 women in the class.  It was a little crowded in the room, but we certainly had enough room to work.  Most of the women brought their own computerized machines.  Then there was me: when I told them I sew using a 25-year-old Kenmore (which I love and will never part with), they said they would reserve a Bernina 180 for me.  I could see why!  It is a wonderful machine!

 On Thursday we learned several heirloom sewing techniques, including sewing lace-to-lace, lace-to-entredeux, entredeux-to-fabric, and gathered lace to fabric.  On Friday we put those techniques into practice making a blouse.  We embroidered (on the machine), made a lace-insertion diamond with a hemstitch around it, and made pintucks using gimp around the diamond.  We also did a lovely crocheted edge (using a water-soluable stabalizer with pearle-cotton in the bobbin) and some hemstitching around each sleeve, the neck edge and the lower hem.

This is the embroidery pattern I chose in progress.  And here are some of the others that were made.

The white-on-white butterfly was very elegant looking.