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"We'll take three dozen," said one gift shop owner in a fashionable suburb of Minneapolis.

"Let me start with a dozen and then we'll contact you," a department store buyer in Cincinnati told her.

"How many ladies can we count on getting from you?" an alert neck-wear department manager queried Mrs. Morris.

In her charming southern accent the lady from Georgia, who now lives in Minneapolis, explained to me, "I've always been a dabbler—messing with first one thing and then another but this is the most explosive idea I've come across yet. I declare I don't know what's going to happen next. It looks like it might become a wide-spread fad."

What Mrs. Morris was referring to was the fact that although she just began marketing her Sophisticated Ladies last November, she has been bringing them into being at the rate of 250 per month and is now looking about for improved methods for stepping up production. In spite of assembly line face-painting and outside help in the millinery department, she finds herself still running behind schedule. On top of this, a large stationery store in Minneapolis has asked her to speak on her work at a meeting of stationer's wives from five surrounding states—for a fee, of course. She has already accepted an invitation to appear on a Minneapolis television show and talk about her hobby.

MARGARETT MORRIS has had no formal training in art work. She is always interested in trying out new craft ideas as they come along, but her main idea is to produce something "all her own." Today, her home is filled with handsome examples of many hobbies. Lovely Dresden figures she has done are particularly in evidence, and she supposed it was this work that led her to turning pecans into Sophisticated Ladies.

Having done many pieces of Dresden she was casting about for new fields to conquer and her glance happened to fall on a sack of nice, large pecans in the shell she had bought at the store for baking purposes.

Good, smooth, oval surfaces, she mused; almost like little faces and with her mind's eye she saw faces materializing—big black eyes, long lashes, coquettish eyebrow and crazy little hats. Soon she was actually filling in the rest of the features. Rejecting idea after idea, she finally settled on the idea of wrapping a ribbon around the nut—head, that is, and cocking a perky hat on top of that. The material of the hat would afford anchorage for a corsage pin to fasten these—yes, they would be costume pins, that's what! They could be used as lapel pins, ornaments for sports hats, berets and tams, pinned on pocketbooks or cuffs. And they would be distinctive gifts for all occasions—birthdays, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, graduations, Christmas and for bridge or canasta party favors. Of course, they are easily adapted for place cards for luncheons, showers, or informal dinners.

SELECTING THE most uniform pecans, Mrs. Morris experimented with different art supplies she had on hand for her Dresden work and other art endeavors and found that tempera colors gave the best effect. A crescent of white on one side of a black round makes the eyes, a sweep of black for lashes and brows, a pair of dots for nostrils, full red curves for the provocative lips. Thus only these three colors—black, white and red are necessary.

Wiping off the pecan with a soft, dry cloth to be sure of a dustless surface, Mrs. Morris painted on the complete face, one pecan after another at first. As the need to step up production arose and as a precaution against smearing, she adopted the assembly line method. Preparing at least a couple of dozen nuts to be painted, she now applies the white of the eye on all and sets them on corrugated paper to keep them from rolling around until they are dry. By the time she is through with the last, the first ones are dry enough for the black—eyes all the way through, then brows and lashes down the line. As soon as these are thoroughly dry she makes their make-up permanent with a transparent glaze—the same she used in her Dresden craft.

In the process of painting in the features, Mrs. Morris kept changing the expressions until she finally ended up with the flirtatious, sophisticated look now worn by each Lady. The finished product, complete with its modish and extreme chapeau, looked so very much like a sophisticated lady that she just had to call them "Sophisticated Ladies." She has been told that they look like her and, to tell the truth, there is a slight family resemblance!

Now for the ribbons: grosgrain turned out to be the most satisfactory to keep in place and it does not fray or become bedraggled as fast as lighter weight kinds. Mrs. Morris has found plain colors in great variety available; also stripes and polka dots fit in well. Cutting off ten-inch lengths with angled ends, she centers one on the Lady's head and glues it there and on down the sides of her face with fish glue. When the run of heads have their ribbons fastened, her next step is to fold the back of the ribbon closely to the head and tack down securely, blind-stitching down the back to the neck. It is finished off by winding the thread several times around the ribbon to keep it tight against the chin line. Careful harmonizing of thread color and ribbon is part of the painstaking work put out by Mrs. Morris.

THE MILLINERY creations worn by the Ladies are as zany as any cartoonist's wildest dreams for ridiculing this phase of women's dress. Mrs. Morris confesses she uses hats she'd love to have the nerve to wear herself. Here is where assembly line methods stop. No two hats are alike in shape, trim, color or material. This characteristic of the work keeps her interest alive and makes a display of the Ladies irresistible to the feminine eye. Each hat gets as much attention, in proportion, as Mr. John or Lily Dache give their creations.

In the first place, Mrs. Morris wouldn't think of putting a tall hat on a long, narrow face, nor would she put a cartwheel on a face that had a predominantly horizontal line. She tries on different hats until she finds one that is becoming to each Lady. It's like running a millinery shop in miniature.

Consideration to the ensemble idea of ribbon and trim is a factor that Mrs. Morris handles with great skill. It all adds up to applying the same good taste for these Ladies as she would for buying her own Easter bonnet. The trim is also coordinated with the type of hat.

Basically speaking, the hats are crocheted with fine yarn, mercerized cotton in solid or variegated crochet thread, carpet warp, metallic-shot or any novelty thread (not too coarse) available. As with any type of crocheting the size of the hook varies with the weight of the thread or yarn, and it is usually designated on the label of the thread when it is purchased. Trims are limited only to what can be found in miniature. Feathers, Lilliputian flowers, sequins, all kinds of beads, veiling, self-trim and diminutive ribbon bows are the conventional choices and there is no end to the combinations. Wholesale millinery suppliers have assorted boxes of these trims. Ten cent stores and department stores have flower counters with a good assortment that can be separated into small enough trims. Accessory or trim counters in yard goods departments often yield possibilities. Mrs. Morris' friends have been glad to contribute things they were not able to find a use for themselves. She advises further: "Leave no trunk in the attic or your neighbor's unopened in the search for trimmings."

Regardless of the material Mrs. Morris uses for crocheting, probably the easiest hat and the one with the most possibilities started out as a flat circle. Even one of solid crochet (single or double) beginning on a chain circle of as few stitches as possible to work with can be "draped" into a number of different shapes—up in front and back, up in front and down in back or vice versa, as well as up on each or both sides. The hats have to lie flat in back in order to be pinned so the design must be adaptable to this—not bobbed off short. But this is only the starting place. Any crochet stitch is usable, and even employing a very loose single crochet gives a pretty, lacy effect that can be pressed into a dainty poke-shaped hat with a blob of flowers perched on the rim some place for the final demure effect.

Hats with crowns greatly increase the variety—from sombreros to turbans, cartwheels to pill boxes, sailors to Stetsons. Mrs. Morris says she crochets "by ear" and she never knows what is going to turn out until she's finished. Nevertheless, the basic rules for crocheting still hold—start with a circle and increase every third or fourth stitch to flare, stitch in stitch to drop off as for sides of crown, and decrease (skip) stitches to draw in, for a top heavy crown for example.

The final accessory touch Mrs. Morris gives the Ladies is a pair of earrings for those who are the type. Lacking the right color in beads is no obstacle to Mrs. Morris; she simply paints white beads with enamel. She also uses jet beads, colored glass, pearl or any novelty bead she can find, sewing them on the head ribbon through both holes at the proper ear level

BECAUSE OF the wide commercial acceptance of Sophisticated Ladies, Mrs. Morris has evolved a professional merchandising system. First of all, she designed a card to pin them on. "Sophisticated Ladies" is printed down one side and "Marg's Originals" down the other. A Minneapolis printing company makes these cards up on special order for her with two perforations for the pin holding the Lady on the card.

For protection to the ladies and to make for attractive packaging, Mrs. Morris ordered from a box company transparent acetate boxes similar to corsage boxes florists use. The floor of these boxes is three by five inches, the same size as the card, and when the Ladies are pinned to the card, the two-inch depth of the box protects feathers and flowers, preserves the general fresh appearance of the Lady and makes for ease in packing and displaying.

The next problem that faced Mrs. Morris was packing for shipment, and this was solved by ordering corrugated paper boxes the outside size of the plastic boxes. In addition, she ordered bigger boxes just the right size for shipping one dozen, two dozen or half dozen lots. She reasoned that caring for the professional details would pay off, and it did.

Beginning sales were to friends and acquaintances, but Mrs. Morris had her eye on bigger distribution from the beginning. When she managed to hold back a dozen or so from her friends, she packed them up in their plastic and then their mailing boxes and hied herself off to the gift shops in the neighboring suburbs of Minneapolis and one exclusive department store in the loop. In all cases she placed them by direct sales rather than consigning them. Each store agreed to sell them for the same retail price of $2. Naturally, she is able to give better wholesale prices on lots of a dozen.

In dealing with department stores Mrs. Morris found that there were many regulations of OPS and departmentalizing that were not encountered in gift shops. For example, a larger markup could be made, thus larger profits to the store and greater willingness to buy if they were placed in neckwear rather than jewelry departments. Since they fasten on by pin (corsage pins are bought from florist's supply house) rather than clasp they are not considered "jewelry" and therefore are tax-free in the eyes of Uncle Sam.

The Ladies were not hard to get into the shops—they sold themselves on sight. By way of branching out, Mrs. Morris packed half-dozen lots and sent them to managers of accessory and neckwear departments of out-of-town stores. A shop in Cincinnati, took two dozen Ladies as a result of this approach. It is only courtesy, suggests Mrs. Morris, to include return postage when the Ladies are sent out unsolicited and so far the proportion of acceptances is high.

In case Mrs. Morris can expand her production she is considering contacting teen-corner accessory departments in different stores and perhaps visiting stores in near-by, smaller towns.