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Always Mrs. Stradley brought home unusual pine cones, bunches of the wild flowers, and often, odd bits of dried seed pods or stems. For many years the collections of interesting dried flora were just "pretties" that she tucked into vases,

Then a cousin asked her help in brightening up the jars of jams and jellies that she had evolved from a hobby to a profitable business. The cousin, using old family recipes from the deep South, had built up a thriving market for her wares, but she wanted something unusual to draw attention to the jars as they stood on the shelves of shops. She had already designed a natural colored burlap covering over the lids, tied with raffia.

Mrs. Stradley thought of her pine cones and dried flowers. Fashioning a bouquet of these dried materials, she tied it on the burlap top, and it was perfect! As she experimented with the pine cones, using first the whole small ones, she tried cutting the larger ones, to make flat flowers. Soon she was painting them in gay colors. One day she pinned a finished bouquet on the lapel of her coat.

SO WAS born Mrs. Stradley's business of "pine pretties" and "woodland bouquets," boutonnieres of native mountain materials, sold now in the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild shops in Rockefeller Center, New York; in Washington, D.C.; in Asheville, and on the Skyline Drive. From these shops Mrs. Stradley has orders for all the boutonnieres that she can make in her own home, on the part time basis that she has confined it to, while she manages a household of a husband and three children. But Asheville is a convention city, with hundreds of state and national gatherings held each year in its scenic wonderland, and Mrs. Stradley's bouquets are attracting attention as souvenirs of the section. One convention manager has discussed with Mrs. Stradley the possibility of providing 1,000 "pine pretties" for the women who will gather a year hence.

Such a large order would mean considerable organization for Mrs. Stradley, who has been collecting her materials with the aid of her nine-year-old son, Leslie, Jr., in the fall and winter, and drying, in big supermarket bags, enough of them to last for a year. She does all of the work herself, with occasional help from the family, on her large porch overlooking the mountains and a beautiful lake, or in an upstairs room which has gradually taken on the aspects of the deep woods. Should orders begin coming by thousands instead of dozens, Mrs. Stradley will have to enlarge her working space and have more help than that provided by her son, and her college age daughter who has been assisting during summer vacations.

As soon as she realized that she had a marketable product, Mrs. Stradley followed the advice of her cousin and joined the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, made up of groups, schools, and individuals interested in the pursuit and preservation of handicrafts of the southern mountains. Members of the Guild come from eight southern states, and have the privilege of selling their wares in Guild shops wherever they are operated. Most of them are in the mountain sections of the southern states, and cater particularly to tourists. Two are in New York and Washington.

During July the Craftsmen's Fair is held in Asheville, sponsored by the Guild, and for a week members demonstrate and sell their crafts in booths set up in the City Auditorium. Mrs. Stradley has demonstrated at the fair, and her first year cleared more than $100 on individual sales, in addition to orders from shops whose representatives come to the fair.

THE SEEDS and flowers Mrs. Stradley gathers in big paper bags obtained from the supermarket. Walks in the nearby woods, and Sunday excursions with the family provide the bulk of them, though she has recently added dried cotton bolls to her repertory, and these she gathers when she goes on occasional business trips into South Carolina with her husband.

Her friends' gardens furnish many of the iris pods, lilac blossoms, dogwood berries, grape vines, and an increasing number of dried flowers which she, and friends too, find a delight in making useful. So far Mrs. Stradley estimates that she has used as many as fifty kinds of dried flowers and seeds. The latest that she has tried, and successfully, is a cluster of dried forsythia seed pods. Many of the flowers grow wild in the woods and fields, and among her favorites there are first, of course, the pine cones, then the rhododendron, wild azaleas, and paulownia.

Many of the seeds and flowers dry with some color still on them, and these Mrs. Stradley tries to gather at just the time to preserve their beauty. Some pine cones she finds easier for cutting than others. She has also learned that cones expand as they dry, and are easier to cut at a certain stage of expansion. Many of the cones she picks up on the ground. Others she gathers from the trees, and for this both she and her small son have become expert at donning blue jeans and climbing.

Having gathered and dried her materials to the right point, Mrs. Stradley then cuts them with wire clippers. The cones she cuts horizontally, achieving a flat blossom. The grapevine, iris stem, and jimsonweed, which are the base of most of the bouquets, she cuts into varied lengths, taking advantage of the curls in the grapevine to make a graceful, trailing base for the blossoms.

After each piece of material is cut, she wires it separately, with fine picture wire into lengths of approximately four inches. She then dips the wired blossom into a large container of glue.

From the grocery store she obtains corrugated packing boxes that canned goods have come in, and she sticks the gluey, wired flowers around the edge of the boxes, standing them upright to dry, in such military precision that each is safe, and does not stick to its neighbor, nor to anything else! When filling a large order, Mrs. Stradley has her upstairs room running over with the corrugated boxes, the flower "soldiers" arranged in stiff rows.

AFTER THE individual flowers have dried, Mrs. Stradley paints each one, or sets aside a few to leave in the natural colors. When filling a large order, she decides at this point on the number she will make in various colors, pink, blue, peach, yellow, red, or white. For summer orders she uses more pastels, for winter orders, more natural browns and gilts.

The "soldiers" now wear hats of many bright colors, and again return to the edges of the boxes to dry.

Then comes the assembling of the boutonnieres. The season of the year, the price at which the shop wants to sell them, and the available materials, plus the artistic talent that is the real secret of Mrs. Stradley's success, determine the combinations. The smaller, single pine cone pins, which are usually left in the native color, Mrs. Stradley calls "pine pretties." These sell for fifty cents retail. The combined materials, which she calls "woodland bouquets" sell for $1 and $1.50.

Having assembled the bouquet, Mrs. Stradley then cuts the wire off, and puts an additional coating of glue on the back, for she finds the glue not only a strengthener to keep the materials stiff, but a preservative as well. She then gives the whole bouquet a highlighting with gilt paint, so daintily and delicately that she loses none of the pastel color, which is again one of the touches that is all her own and produces the individuality that contributes so strongly to the success of her venture. Over the entire back she puts a coat of gilt paint, and glues on the pin. Where she has used iris or jimsonweed she employs a hat pin. For a grapevine base she uses a small safety pin. Then again she adds a layer of glue.

Mrs. Stradley places great emphasis and even greater faith on the glue, declaring that every time she performs one operation, she inserts another layer of glue!

The finished product is allowed to dry and set, then it is mounted on a small square of burlap, in some contrasting color, which Mrs. Stradley ravels at the edges to give a neat finish. Finding the burlap is as much work as finding the dried materials, for Mrs. Stradley spends many hours in the bargain basements of local stores to get attractive colors. She now has an arrangement with some of the stores to call her when certain colors come in, and she buys in quantity.