I have 2 of these. Last spring, I repotted- as I had tried to overwinter but they both kept declining more & more. Had them in hanging baskets, south window. By spring, ALL of it was brown/dead looking, ( both plants) except for about 1/4 of it. I unpotted, trimmed the roots, cut out all the brown stems, put them both back into their same, sanitized hanging baskets w/ 25% Lowe's potting soil, 25% regular sand & 50% perlite (I had not yet learned of Al's soil mixes) & I hung them on the porch facing east. Each plant had like literally 4 stems left! I thought for sure they would die, so I kind of neglected them, except for a deep watering about every other wk. This was mid-April & by July, the entire plant had come back and then some! By August, it was blooming & had 4ft long stems! I am back to overwintering these again, they're starting to look kinda bad again but not nearly as bad as this time l.y. I think they're pretty hardy plants, considering I've only been gardening for 4 yrs so I still consider myself a novice. I will repot them again this spring & repeat the whole process- only using 511 this time, so hopefully they'll get even bigger! Wish I'd taken a pic of them last August.

Susan It is on the north side of the house and gets early morning sun;but not a lot of it.It's also kind of towards the back in the garden. It is really impressive this year.I also read that it is from the wandering Jew family. Try moving yours to the north side and see if that helps. Kathi

My grandaughter in Livingston had three that were over 8 feet tall when we moved them to Tyler....if that gives you any help. You might ask on the Texas site if anyone has more detailed help.

I agree that bridal illusion is what you want. (I got mine at Jo-Ann's.) Make sure you get the right color too...white vs. ivory will make a huge difference depending on the color of the dress. You will also need to experiment with stabilizers. For the veil I made, I ended up using a wash away stabilizer, though they also make a tear- away stabilizer. In fact, buy extra and practice until you are comfortable with the process and results so that when it comes to the real veil, you will be confident in what you are doing. If you are sewing on a lace with a straight edge, then I would suggest you cut the veil larger, mark with disappearing ink where you want to sew on the lace, zig zag over the straight edge of the lace with invisible thread (monofilament), then carefully trim the excess illusion away from underneath the lace (don't cut the lace or the stitching) and you are done. (Practice first using regular thread so you can see where you stitches are going.) If instead the lace is shaped, then you will need to practice doing machine applique with the lace as you will need to stitch the lace down all along the shaped edge. (If you've not seen free motion quilting, take a look at you tube to see how it's done...it's a very easy and relaxed motion that you use as you control the stitch length and placement rather than the feed dogs.) I would still use a zig zag stitch and be careful with placement of the stitches at inside and outside corners so the corner is tacked down. Use regular contrasting thread at first so you can see what you are doing, and you will want to drop the feed dogs on your machine so you are able to move the fabric as you wish. You may find you can do ok with pinning the sandwich (stabilizer, then illusion, then lace on top...sometimes you may need stabilizer on top and bottom, depending on the materials), but if not, then get a large embroidery hoop and try hooping it all together to hold the fabric firmer and to give you something to hang onto while you are sewing. (I was working on smaller pieces and found hooping gave me more control.) When you are ready and are comfortable with what you are doing, then switch to the invisible thread and you'll be amazed at how good it looks. Again you will need to trim away the excess carefully, once your lace is attached. I'm not seeing the pic you linked above....