Making a scene

Posted on September 8, 2025 by Salley Mavor

For the past few weeks, I’ve been playing with dolls and setting up miniature scenes in my studio. They’re for my exhibition at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, which opens on Sept. 9, 2025. While working on these dioramas, I felt just as absorbed and transfixed as I did as a child. My imagination and abilities may have evolved since then, but the overwhelming desire to create other worlds is the same. I thought it would be fun to share photos and videos of these practice set-ups before everything was moved and installed at the museum.

Four scenes, depicting winter, spring, summer and fall, are reassembled and on view in display cases in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor. In addition to the dioramas, a wide selection of embroidered pieces that celebrate the wonder and magic of the natural world can be seen, including framed tableaus on loan from private collections and original picture book illustrations from the past 40 years. The show will be on view through Dec. 31, 2025 at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA. I will be giving an Artist Talk on Sat., Nov. 1, 2025 at 1:00 PM (pre-register here).

video of the practice Fall Scene

When I visited the museum last year to choose which galleries to hang my art, the curator, Pam Weeks, also pointed out 4 large display cases for 3-dimensional work. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to comb through all of my treasures and create miniature worlds! I ended up using a mishmash of figures, houses, furniture, trees, and other stage dressing materials that I’ve made and collected over the years.

Many of the 80 wee folk characters are sample projects from my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk: New Adventures. In addition to providing patterns and instructions for making the figures, the book explains how to make the weighted doll stands you see here.

Some of the trees and houses were used in Liberty and Justice, the stop-motion animation that Rob and I made.

The winter scene is modeled after the Winter Wonderland that I once created for a display case at Boston Children’s Hospital. The bottle brush evergreen trees included in the arrangement are vintage pieces from the 1950s, originally belonging to my mother-in-law.

video of the practice Winter Scene

One end of the old oak table served as a work bench where I sawed tree branches and drilled holes to screw them to wooden bases.

For the spring scene, I built a May Pole for the wee folk to dance around. The most complicated part was figuring out how to weave the ribbons around the pole.

video of the practice Spring Scene

Most of the materials I used to build things are gathered from nature, but I like to include special items, such as this 1920’s vintage baby carriage that belonged to my mother.

The summer scene is jampacked with figures posing in different vignettes.

This pair of wee folk are proudly showing off some oversized vegetables that are left over from my stuffed pins period.

Even Polly Doll makes an appearance doing her laundry.

video of the practice Summer Scene

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this preview. Rob and I plan to visit the museum soon to see the exhibition and take photos, which I’ll share in future posts.

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.

Exhibit at Mariposa Museum in Peterborough, NH

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Salley Mavor

I’m pleased to announce that the Mariposa Museum & World Culture Center in Peterborough, NH is hosting my exhibition, Bedtime Stitches & Other Works, through January 4, 2026. Rob and I visited the museum for the first time last week and were delighted by what we saw. The museum staff did a remarkable job hanging my work, which is spread throughout the building’s 3 levels.

The exhibition includes a wide selection of framed tableaux and sculptures that span the past 30 years of my career, including the Wall of Women (printed enlargements of portraits from “Cover Up”) and the complete set of original art for my most recent picture book, MY BED.

Bedtime Stitches & Other Works ~ Aug. 1 – Nov. 1, 2025
Mariposa Museum & World Culture Center, Peterborough, NH
Artist Talk ~ Sat., Sept. 27 at 2:00 PM ~ Register Here

Get a peek at the exhibit in this video.

While we were there, Rob took a photo for a family that posed in front of the display of wee folk. Many of the dolls are sample projects from my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk.

I enjoyed meeting some wonderful folks who told me about what they like to make.

I’m looking forward to returning to the museum to give an Artist Talk on Sat., Sept. 27 at 4:00 PM ~ Seating is limited, so if you plan on coming, please register here soon.

On display is my Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion, surrounded by a group of nursery rhyme ornaments. The exhibit also includes Displaced, Cover Up, Facetime, Whiskers, and over a dozen other pieces.

Another highlight of our trip was connecting with my artist friend, Beth Krommes, who lives in Peterborough. Beth and I first met 50 years ago, in a printmaking class at Syracuse University. She then took a junior year abroad in London and I transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design. We’ve kept in touch all these years, periodically talking about our current projects and commiserating about the challenges of working in the children’s book industry. It’s interesting that both of us have delved into a variety of mediums, including picture book illustration and textiles. Another aspect we have in common is our primary interest in design and visual communication, and our impulse to explore different ways of achieving that.

Beth is mostly known for her beautiful scratchboard illustrations, but she has always explored other ways of working, including fabric design, rug hooking and weaving. What is consistent is her incredible sense of design and attention to detail.

Beth Krommes will be participating in the Monadnock Art Open Studio Tour, which is being held Oct. 11, 12, 13, 2025. If you go to her studio, I guarantee that you will not be disappointed!

Summertime: Part 9 – moss, sky and stone wall

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In Part 9 of the series about Summertime, I share photos and videos documenting the process of creating landscape details, such as moss, sky and the stone wall. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems & branches, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), Part 5 – Baltimore oriole (head and feet), Part 6 – rose vine, Part 7 – raspberry plants, and Part 8 – stitching flora.

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.

See the Four Seasons Series and dozens of other works in my upcoming exhibition, Works by Salley Mavor: To Every Season at the New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, MA, Sept. 9 – Dec. 27, 2025. The show will include recent work, as well as rarely seen early pieces on loan from private collections.

MOSS
Wouldn’t it be nice to step out your front door onto a mossy carpet every morning? The simple idea of stitching multiple French knots side by side to form a naturalistic ground cover isn’t a new concept. But it reached a heightened level of obsession for me throughout this Four Seasons series. It’s one of those repetitive activities that has you totally mesmerized.

To make the moss, I used all kinds of thread, from silk to cotton floss, depending on what kind of look I was after. The naturalistic appearance comes from combining different colors and shades of thread in groups of 3 or 4 strands. After all, the world is made up of variegated shades, not solid colors.

SKY
To make the blue sky background, I patched together scraps from my stash of plant-dyed wool felt. My supply of this extra special felt is limited because the cottage business that produced it is longer in operation. Luckily, I stocked up and have enough felt to keep me going for the rest of my productive life, although the blue pieces are dwindling. When asked where to find felt, I usually refer people to A Child’s Dream, which offers a nice selection, including similar subtly hued plant-dyed wool felt.

This approach harkened back to 2012, when I pieced scraps of lavender and blue felt to make the background of my Hornbook Magazine cover illustration.

With Summertime, I was not content to leave the blue expanse alone, especially with its distracting scars stretching across the sky. My solution was to divert attention away from the patched pieces by filling the blue background with swirly lines and spirals.

The following video shows how I chainstitched the spirals in subtle hues of cotton flower thread. Its matte finish is different from the glossy sheen of cotton embroidery floss. DMC flower thread is no longer available, but if you’re interested, Dutch Treat Designs has some of the discontinued thread in stock.

STONE WALL
Sometimes, I incorporate natural objects in my work. For the Summertime scene, I built a wall with stones that I gathered at the beach. I picked out a selection of small thin ones with a flat surface area on the back, which were glued to a piece of felt. I used Alene’s Jewel-It, which is a fabric embellishment adhesive.

After the glue completely dried, I filled in the spaces between the stones with a mishmash of stitches. The other 3 scenes in the seasonal landscape series have stones, too. Some are real and some are made of felt. Click on the following links to learn about incorporating stones in the other scenes:
Mossy Glen: Part 3 – stone walls
Frosty Morning: Part 4 (stone walls)
Harvest Time: Part 6 (underground)

The following video shows how I arranged different parts of the scene before sewing the pieces in place.

Stay tuned for Part 10, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of making the wee folk characters in Summertime. Unless I discover that I’ve overlooked something, Part 10 will be the final segment about making Summertime.

Bedtime Stitches on Martha’s Vineyard

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Salley Mavor

After touring the country for 5 years, Bedtime Stitches, the exhibition of original embroidered bas-relief artwork for my picture book, MY BED, is winding down. There will be 2 more showings this year in New England. Both exhibitions are hosted by the Mariposa Museum in their two locations, in Oak Bluffs, MA on the island of Martha’s Vineyard and in Peterborough, NH. UPDATE: Next scheduled location: Mingei International Museum, San Diego, CA, Oct. 31 , 2026 – April 18, 2027

Bedtime Stitches ~ June 10 – July 20, Mariposa Museum, Oak Bluffs, MA
Meet the Artist Event ~ Wed., July 9th at 4:00 PM
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Bedtime Stitches and Other Works ~ July 25 – Nov. 1, 2025
Mariposa Museum, Peterborough, NH.
This location will include a wide selection of Salley Mavor’s art.

On Wed., July 9th, I’ll be taking the short ferry ride from my hometown of Woods Hole to Oak Bluffs, for a Meet the Artist event at 4:00 pm at the Mariposa Museum. If you’re visiting Martha’s Vineyard or live on the island, I’d love to meet you!

Right around the corner from the museum are hundreds of gingerbread-style cottages in the Martha’s Vineyard Camp-Meeting Assoc. Campground. The cottages have an interesting history, with their tiny plots originally holding tents for religious revival meetings started in the 1840’s.

Since the 2020 premiere of Bedtime Stitches at the Cahoon Museum, 5 heavy duty shipping boxes full of framed artwork and mounted information panels have been shipped thousands of miles, to and from a dozen museums around the country.

Many of you’ve written to tell me how you made the trip to see my work, driving for hours in carloads of friends and family, and sometimes even coming by train or airplane. I so appreciate all of your extraordinary efforts to see the show. And I’m thankful to the different host venues that made it possible for the public to see up close the fine detail and 3-dimensional quality of my bas-relief sculptural embroideries. Even though the tour is officially ending in Nov., 2025, interested museums and curators are welcome to contact me for information about hosting an exhibition of these pieces and/or other artwork from my personal collection. To get in touch, please use the contact form at the bottom of this page.

For those of you who live too far away to experience my work in person, the following 2 videos offer a way to relish the scenes and see every little stitch. Also, autographed copies of MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World are available in my shop here.

It took 2 to 3 years to make the 18 illustrations for MY BED. During that period, I shared the process of making the stitched 3-dimensional artwork. Posts about each page are listed here:

Title Page
Night Sky – part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Afghanistan – part 1, part 2
Ghana – part 1, part 2, part 3
Holland – part 1, part 2, part 3
India – part 1, part 2, part 3
Iran – part 1, part 2, part 3
Japan – part 1
North Africa – part 1, part 2, part 3
North America – part 1, part 2, part 3
Russia – part 1, part 2, part 3
Scandinavia – part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
South America – part 1
Mongolia – part 1, part 2, part 3
Home – part 1, part 2, part 3
Animals (spot illustrations) – Rooster, Camel, Parrot, Elephant, Goldfish, Cat, Duck, Sheep, Rabbit, Cow, Crocodile, Giraffe, Dog, Pony.

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Summertime: Part 8 – stitching flora

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In Part 8 of the series about Summertime, I share photos and videos documenting the process of stitching flora. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems & branches, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), Part 5 – Baltimore oriole (head and feet), Part 6 – rose vine, and Part 7 – raspberry plants.

See the Four Seasons Series and dozens of other works in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor at the New England Quilt Museum, Sept. 9 – Dec. 31, 2025.The show includes recent work, as well as rarely seen early pieces on loan from private collections.

Towards the end of the project, after months of constructing most of the 3-dimensional parts of the scene, I was ready to zero in and add embroidered leaves and flowers where they were needed. In the following video, you can see how I spread out on different work tables in my studio. Every horizontal surface was full of materials and tools, as well as the bits and pieces I’d finished making.

To do the stitching, I require very few things – a piece of felt, a needle, thread, and a thimble. And good lighting, of course. And closeup glasses. No hoop, no cumbersome magnifying equipment and no fancy needles or scissors.

It was almost impossible to draw markings on this fuzzy wool felt, even with chalk. So, I mostly worked freehand and removed the stitched red guide lines later in the process. I used DMC cotton flower thread, which is thicker and bolder than embroidery floss. In this video, watch how I chain-stitched leaves and added Parawire stems on top.

Chain-stitching these leaf shapes was as soothing as filling in a coloring book.

I added patches of black-eyed susans to open areas of blue sky below the raspberries and above the stone wall (coming in part 9).

In other open areas, I chain-stitched blades of grass, dotted with little French knot flowers.

I was nearing the end of the project, which meant that it was time to tackle the border. I got out my stash of upholstery fabric and tried out different color combinations. Red and gold popped out at me; they contrasted with the blue sky and brought out the color of the raspberries. I padded the wooden stretchers with cotton quilt batting and sewed the upholstery fabric around the frame, which created a shallow box to fill with all of the parts.

Stay tuned for Part 9, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of stitching moss and the sky, and building the stone wall in Summertime.

Summertime: Part 7 – raspberry plants

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In Part 7 of the series about Summertime, I share photos and videos documenting the process of making the raspberry plants. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems & branches, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), Part 5 – Baltimore oriole (head and feet), Part 6 – rose vine, Part 8 – stitching flora, and Part 9 – moss, sky and stone wall.

RASPBERRIES
The idea to add raspberries came late in the process, months after I’d begun stitching and constructing the piece. I was inspired by our new raspberry patch, which was producing the most succulent fruit I’d ever grown. The raspberries practically begged to be featured in the summer scene! My original design included flowers, but I was much more excited about making raspberries.

Now came the fun part, where I examined raspberries, both real and in photos, imagining how to replicate them with stitching and found objects. I searched through my stash and found some frosted glass beads that were just the right shade of reddish pink. The goal wasn’t to reproduce exact copies, but to make the imitation raspberries look even more scrumptious than real ones. The following video demonstrates how I made the felt core, sewed on the beads, and wrapped the stem with embroidery floss.

My supply of beads was limited, so I conserved them by covering just the top and sides of the felt core, leaving a bare back that could more easily be sewn to the background fabric. When I ran out of red beads, I used yellow ones to make more raspberries.

RASPBERRY LEAVES
Looking closely, I noticed that raspberry leaves were quite complex, with fine saw-like teeth that would be hard to replicate in felt. I ended up making a stylized version that was as pointy as I could get.

The following video shows how I sewed wire around the outside edge and embroidered veins on a felt raspberry leaf.

Once there were enough berries and leaves, I linked them together with wire branches. Then, I covered the wire with embroidery floss.

This video shows how I twisted Parawire to make stems and branches and then wrapped the wire with embroidery floss.

This video shows how I covered the thicker bottom branches with a strip of brown felt.

This project is a clear example of the importance of flexibility in my working process. There’s a reason that I steer away from textiles and needlework that involve grids, graphs or patterns. In the beginning, I’m not so certain about how my art is going to develop. Sure, I start with a basic design and structure, but I like to keep a door open for change. In this case, raspberries showed up.

Stay tuned for Part 8, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of stitching flora in Summertime.

Birds on display in Falmouth. MA

Posted on April 24, 2025 by Salley Mavor

I’m excited to announce that Birds of Beebe Woods is currently on display at Eight Cousins Bookshop (199 Main St. location) in my hometown of Falmouth, MA, on Cape Cod. The original framed piece will be there through the end of August, so if you’re coming to town this summer, please stop in for a visit.

Salley with *Birds of Beebe Woods* at Eight Cousins Bookshop in Falmouth, MA

After its stay in the bookshop, the Birds will go to Lowell, MA, where it will be included in my upcoming exhibition at the New England Quilt Museum.
Works by Salley Mavor: To Every Season will be on view Sept. 9 – Dec. 27, 2025.

I was inspired to create the piece a dozen years ago while wandering through Beebe Woods, which is located a mile from the bookshop, at the top of Highfield Drive in Falmouth.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK: Birds of Beebe Woods was made in 2012 for a fiber art exhibit celebrating the beloved forest in my home town of Falmouth, Massachusetts. I wanted to feature wildlife as well as convey the natural wooded environment in Beebe Woods. I chose to portray birds, making them realistic enough to be recognized, but patterned and abstracted in a way that made them fun to stitch. I started with a simple sketch and then got to work on the woodsy border, with its felt-covered wire filigree stage curtains. The crow came next and then the other birds common to our area of New England, making a dozen total. Listed clock-wise, they are female cardinal, nuthatch, black-throated green warbler, male cardinal, wren, downy woodpecker, blue-jay, robin, goldfinch, cedar waxwing, American crow and chickadee. I hand stitched the entire piece, using my unique blend of techniques and working methods.

ARCHIVES: To see posts about the making of the birds in the piece, go to these links: crow here, goldfinch, nuthatch and chickadee here, blue jay here, cedar waxwing here, cardinals here, robin here, wren here.

The original framed piece is not for sale, so that it’s available to show in public exhibitions. The next best thing to seeing it in person is to get the poster in my Etsy shop. Puzzles, notebooks, note cards, and bookmarks are also available.

Self Portrait returns to Woods Hole Library

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Salley Mavor

My Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion is back on public display at the Woods Hole Library. The library has been its semi-permanent home (except when it is exhibited elsewhere) since I made the piece in 2007. So, why loan it to the Woods Hole Library? Because this particular stone building has been a constant source of comfort and stability during my whole life. It’s a central part our community that reflects the unique charm and character of our village.15 years ago, I made a quilt square of the library for the Woods Hole Village Quilt, which is also on view.

My Self Portrait shows a spiral of dolls, one for each year up to age 52, which was my age in 2007. My birth date is embroidered in the center. Yes, I’ll soon be turning 70! Each figure is dressed in an outfit I would have worn that year, taken from memories, family photos or my imagination. The figures range from 1 in. to 3 1/2 in. and are variations of the wee folk dolls in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk.

Since I made many of my own clothes, I remember the fabrics and clothing styles. They are recreated here with smaller scale fabric and embroidered wool felt. My husband, Rob, appears the year we were married and my sons, Peter and Ian, are included through the years when they were little and physically connected to me. The tatting around the outside of the circle was made over 100 years ago by my grandmother. This piece resonates with a lot of people whose lives parallel the same time period. I can’t tell you how many women remark that they had an alpaca poncho, too!

A woman wrote to tell me that 3 generations of her family enjoyed seeing my work at a recent exhibition. She especially wanted me to know that her 4 year old granddaughter was so taken with my self portrait that they couldn’t tear her away. For little Emma, the progression of dolls opened up the concept of growing up and visualized the passage of time in a simple, direct way. I love hearing accounts like this, because it reaffirms my intention to make art for all ages, whether it’s book illustration or stand alone embroidered pieces like this one.

NEW PODCAST: In this podcast interview, I share the inspiration and process behind my Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion. The Object Itself Podcast, hosted by the Albany Institute of History and Art was published 1/23/25.

The following 2 photos of me with Eel Pond in the background, one taken in 1960 and the other in 2025, are hung on the wall next to the Self Portrait.

VIDEO tour through fashion and music: As well as clothing memories, we all have a personal soundtrack that goes with different times in our lives. This video is a nostalgic tour through fashion and music that my husband Rob and I put together. At the end, there’s a list of the music that I remember listening to.

10 minute nostalgic tour through fashion and music

Note cards and posters of the piece are available in my Etsy shop here.

Summertime: Part 6 – rose vine

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In Part 6 of the series about Summertime, I share photos and videos that document the process of making the rose vine. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems & branches, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), and Part 5 – Baltimore oriole (head and feet). Part 7 – raspberry plants, and Part 8 – stitching flora.

See the Four Seasons Series and dozens of other works in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor at the New England Quilt Museum, Sept. 9 – Dec. 31, 2025. The show includes recent work, as well as rarely seen early pieces on loan from private collections.

ROSES
I learned how to make basic felt roses like these years ago from Mimi Kirchner’s blog. Mimi’s tutorial is available here. I love how deceptively simple the process is, starting with a circle of felt and folding it like origami to make a rose shape. Watch the following video to see how I finished off the raw felt edges with blanket stitching and folded the circle to make a rose.

Felt Rose

LEAVES
To cut out the sharp-toothed edge around the rose leaves, I used pinking shears. The following video shows how I stitched wire around the outside of a felt leaf and embroidered its stem and veins.

Felt Rose Leaf

I twisted wire to make a central vine and added the roses, leaves, thorns, and curly tendrils. Besides felt and embroidery floss, the most common material in my artwork is wire. Felt alone is too floppy and needs structural supports. I used Parawire in a range of gauges, from 24 to 32, to build up the thickness and strength I wanted.

The last step was disguising the shiny metallic wire with embroidery floss. Part 3 in this series includes videos of wrapping wire stems and branches on other foliage in the Summertime piece. I wound 1 or 2 strands of floss around and around the stems until the surface was evenly covered. It was a bit tricky to make the thorns look sharp!

Stay tuned for Part 7, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of making the raspberry plants in Summertime. 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.

tiny shoes are big

Posted on February 23, 2025 by Salley Mavor

What is it about tiny shoes? There’s something irresistible about small scale footwear, whether it’s baby booties or doll shoes. Every time I post a photo with miniature shoes, there’s a huge response. So, I thought I’d share a selection of little slippers, boots and even high-heeled shoes I’ve made that range from precious to provocative (with a surprise guest near the end of the post).

Many of the illustrations in my picture book, MY BED, show pairs of shoes that were put aside at bedtime, including the slippers above and the hiking boots below.

When making the Japanese interior scene for MY BED, I tried hard to convey a spare and ordered aesthetic, but couldn’t help myself from placing 2 pairs of slippers off to the side of the tatami mat. I thought that the shoes would break up the geometric blocks and give the space a lived in appearance. I’ve since learned that I don’t have a proper grasp of Japanese culture, because leaving one’s shoes out like that is a big no no! One follower pointed out that Japanese children would be spanked for being so careless. I was further corrected when the slippers were photoshopped out of the illustration in the Japanese edition of the book!

Early on, I made shoes out of old kid leather gloves that I painted brown, like the ones in this kitchen scene from Mary Had a Little Lamb. The kid leather was thin and pliable enough to cut with scissors and sew with a needle and thread.

For the past 25 years or so, I’ve made shoes out of wool felt, which is much more forgiving than leather. For the rhyme, “Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe”, in Pocketful of Posies, I made felt boots, a leather work apron, and a wooden shoe sign, which I cut out with a jig saw.

The different nursery rhyme characters in Pocketful of Posies wear over 100 shoes, in varying colors and sizes. There’s Little Bo Peep who lost her sheep…

the children playing Ring Around the Roses…

and the Crooked Man who walked a crooked mile in his hiking boots.

An old watch strap buckle came in handy for this shoe from “One, two, buckle my shoe”.

Does this shoe house look familiar? It was inspired by an LL Bean boot I found in the closet. Not only did the old woman who lived in a shoe have to feed all those children, she had to keep them all shod, too!

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, from “Pocketful of Posies”

A few years ago, I made a pair of bigger than usual fairies to accommodate some large bur oak acorn caps from the Midwest. Because the Bur Oak fairies had nice big feet (1 1/4″), I could more easily cobble shoes for them. I made their slippers out of felt, with a bit of wire reinforcement to give them a pointy elfin look.

Most of the shoes I make are of the comfortable variety, but occasionally someone demands spike heels.

Like this pair of pink roach killers I made back in 2017, when Rob and I spent a year in the basement filming our stop-motion animation, Liberty and Justice: A Cautionary Tale in the Land of the Free. The film is just as relevant today as it was when it was released in 2018. In the photo below, the Melania character is getting a final fitting for her cameo appearance in the film.

Let’s push aside all that glitz and glamor and finish up with “Jumping Joan”, who’s wearing a pair of sensible brown shoes, which everyone wore to school when I was growing up.