About Salley Mavor

About Salley Mavor

“My aim is to breathe life and emotion into embroidery, an art form that is often perceived as purely decorative.”
Salley mavor

A needle is my tool, thread is my medium and stitches are my marks. For over 45 years, I’ve created 3-dimensional hand-stitched miniature worlds that range from precious to poignant to provocative. My art serves a variety of purposes: it appears as illustrations in children’s books, stand-alone framed artwork, and stop-motion animation.

There is a distinctive over-the-top quality to my art. A combination of storytelling imagery, extra attention to detail, fervent craftsmanship, and the interplay of familiar, yet intriguing materials set it apart.

While I take delight in every careful stitch, it is the spirit of play and the pursuit of a bigger visual narrative that propels my work forward. My objective is to move beyond the confines of embroidery as a medium and create art that is valued for its message and emotional resonance as well as its workmanship.

What I make today and how I do it, is a culmination of a life-long search to find ways of translating what I feel and imagine into something real to share. My wish is for people of all ages to connect with my art in personal and meaningful ways.

Mavorkids1963

Where did this doll-infested needle and thread universe come from? It began at the height of the baby boom, in a family of introverts who were either making things or staring into space. You could say that we excelled at parallel play.

Detail from “Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion”

Education
While studying illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1970’s, an insightful teacher encouraged me to tap into my crafty and playful side. This newfound sense of freedom felt like doing a happy dance—an organic, joyful expression straight from the heart. No longer confined to traditional art mediums, I discovered that working with stitching and soft sculpture allowed my ideas to come alive in new and unexpected ways. For most of my career I have followed this path, creating stitched scenes in bas-relief, much like miniature, shallow stage sets, with figures imposed on embellished fabric backgrounds.

Books – My 3-dimensional artwork is photographed and reproduced in children’s books, including the 2010 award-winning Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes and My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep Around the World. My bestselling how-to book of doll projects, Felt Wee Folk: New Adventures continues to inspire creativity.

Shop – Personally autographed books, cards, jigsaw puzzles, notebooks, and posters with printed reproductions of my embroidered scenes are available in my Etsy Shop.

Birds of Beebe Woods poster, cards, puzzles and notebooks are available in my Etsy Shop

Sale of Original Artwork – My original pieces are no longer available for sale. I have made the decision to retain all works currently in my possession. By holding on to these pieces, I am ensuring that there is a well-rounded and representative body of work ready for exhibition purposes. This way, I can maintain a collection that accurately reflects my artistic vision and creative journey. Printed reproductions of my work are available in my Esty Shop.

Sharing Knowledge – I do not teach classes. However, this blog is full of informative and inspiring photos, videos, and descriptions of projects I’ve made. My how-to book Felt Wee Folk provides step-by-step instructions for making wee folk dolls, with many examples and patterns. To learn my personal philosophy about sharing knowledge and artistic privacy, please read this post: to teach or not to teach.

Animation
After the 2016 presidential election, I formed a satirical wee folk drama troupe, The Wee Folk Players (they’re a stitch). Also, my husband Rob Goldsborough and I made a short stop-motion animated film titled Liberty and Justice: A Cautionary Tale in the Land of the Free.

Screen shot from “Liberty and Justice” animation

My solo exhibit Liberty and Justice was abruptly cancelled in 2018 at its original venue due to its political content. The show was generously picked up by the New England Quilt Museum and the Cotuit Center for the Arts, and portions were included in The Art of Cute at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk, Maine. You can watch my interview about the Liberty and Justice exhibit on WGBH TV and read the post Finding My Voice, which includes an excerpt of my talk about making art that is both precious and provocative.

EXHIBITIONS

To see a schedule of current and upcoming exhibitions of my original bas-relief artwork, including the Bedtime Stitches national tour, please visit the Exhibitions Page.

My most recent book, MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World was published in 2020. You can see blog posts showing the book’s progress here. SALLEY MAVOR: Bedtime Stitches, the touring exhibition of original bas-relief artwork for the book is scheduled into 2027. The current list of venues is here. Inquiries from museums are welcome. For information about hosting the show, please use the contact form below.

See how I made the illustrations for my new picture book, MY BED in this 8-minute documentary.

I live and work on Cape Cod, in Falmouth, Massachusetts. For answers to frequently asked question, please go to the FAQ Page. Contact me using the form below or write to P.O. Box 152, Woods Hole, MA 02543.

Autographed books, prints, puzzles, cards, notebooks and posters are available in my Etsy shop.

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Social Media: Follow me at BlueSky, Facebook and Instagram.
Shop: Autographed books, posters, puzzles, notebooks and cards are available in my Etsy shop.
Contact me via the form above or write to P.O. Box 152, Woods Hole, MA 02543

PODCASTS:

The Object Itself Podcast : Salley Mavor shares the inspiration and process behind her Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion. Published 1/23/25

NeedleXChange PODCAST: Salley Mavor – Telling Wee Folk Tales PART 1 and PART 2. Recorded 11/8/24
School of Stitched Textiles PODCAST: Textile Talk with Salley Mavor. Recorded 9/26/24.
Creative Exchange PODCAST with the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod. Staying True to Yourself and Your Work with Salley Mavor. Recorded 1/6/23
Craft Industry Alliance PODCAST with Mimi Kirchner and Salley Mavor. Recorded 6/1/15

INTERVIEWS

Watch TEXTILE TALK: Textiles in 3D with Salley Mavor, Barbara Schneider, and Jean Sredl, presented by SAQA. Recorded 5/29/24.
Read an interview with the Embroiderer’s Guild of America
Read this interview to find out about my foray into political satire
Read my thoughts about artistic privacy and when to tell how and when not to.
Watch WGBH OPEN STUDIO interview
Read my acceptance speech for the 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award
Read an interview with Create Whimsy
Read an interview with Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Watch a 2016 Interview with Falmouth Community TV

Book trailer for Felt Wee Folk – New Adventures

Information

Autographed books, posters, cards and jigsaw puzzles are available in my Etsy shop.
To see a list of all of my books, go to My Books.
Watch videos about my work: Videos Page
For info about exhibits of my original work, visit the Exhibitions Page.
Frequently asked questions: FAQ Page

Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion (pictured below) is on semi-permanent display at the Woods Hole Public Library. Posters of the piece are available in my Shop here.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky.

Part 10 concludes the series about making my piece Summertime. This post features photos and videos documenting the process of creating the wee folk characters seen frolicking in the warm summer breeze. A complete list of previous articles about making Summertime is at the end of this post.

Summertime is the summer scene in a series of four seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world. Posters, note cards, prints, bookmarks, and jigsaw puzzles of Summertime and the other scenes in the series (Frosty Morning, Mossy Glen and Harvest Time) are available in my Etsy Shop.

WEE FOLK
In the beginning, I’m never sure who is going to appear in these landscapes. The wee folk just show up one by one and claim their spots. After spending many months building places for them to live, it feels satisfying to finally meet the little characters and see them settled into their new homes. You can meet them yourself in the following video.

The figures are similar to the acorn-capped dolls described in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, only smaller in scale (1.5″ – 2″ tall).

Rather than bending pipe cleaners, I used 24-gauge jewelry wire to form the armatures. With this choice, you have to wind a lot of floss around the wire to beef up the limbs so that they look proportional and not too spindly. One advantage of this method is that it eliminates the hassle of dealing with pipe cleaner fuzz, resulting in smoother and more refined doll bodies.

In the figure below, I used both cotton embroidery floss and tapestry yarn to wrap the wire armature. To give the illusion of a knitted vest, I chain stitched yarn around the torso.

For some of their outfits, I embellished wool felt using cotton embroidery floss.

The following 3 videos demonstrate how I made different figures from start to finish, from winding armatures with thread, to stitching clothing, to fashioning hair.

STITCH MINUTE VIDEOS
If you’ve followed me on Instagram and Facebook recently, you’ve probably seen some of my Stitch Minute videos. These short clips offer a glimpse into different aspects of my creative process, like peeking over my shoulder as I work.

While I enjoy sharing these visual moments, I kindly ask that you refrain from seeking in-depth explanations of my techniques beyond what is already shown on my blog or described in Felt Wee Folk. Much of my creative work is guided by intuition, and I feel that examining my process too closely might take away from the magic that makes it special. For those interested in understanding my philosophy on teaching and sharing knowledge, I invite you to read my post to teach or not to teach.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed learning about the making of Summertime. For a more comprehensive understanding of my process, I encourage you to explore previous posts in this series: Overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems and branches, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), Part 5 – Baltimore Oriole (head and feet), Part 6 – rose vine, Part 7 – raspberry plants, Part 8 – stitching flora, and Part 9 – moss, sky and stone wall.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook, Instagram and BlueSky.

SALLEY MAVOR

WEE FOLK STUDIO