Summertime: Part 9 – moss, sky and stone wall

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Salley Mavor

Part 9 in the series of posts about making my piece Summertime features photos and videos documenting the process of creating landscape details, such as moss, sky and the stone wall. For a more comprehensive understanding of my process, I encourage you to explore other 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, Part 9 – moss, sky and stone wall, and Part 10 – wee folk.

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.

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.

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.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Summertime: Part 8 – stitching flora

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Salley Mavor

Part 8 in the series of posts about making my piece Summertime includes photos and videos documenting the process of stitching flora. For a more comprehensive understanding of my process, I encourage you to explore other 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, Part 9 – moss, sky and stone wall, and Part 10 – wee folk.

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

Part 7 in the series of posts about making my piece Summertime features photos and videos documenting the process of creating 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 the opportunity to see Birds of Beebe Woods in person. The original framed piece is on display at Eight Cousins Bookshop (199 Main St. location) in my hometown of Falmouth, MA, on Cape Cod. It will be there for an extended time, until its next scheduled exhibition at another location.

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

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

Part 6 in the series of posts about making my piece Summertime features photos and videos documenting the process of creating the rose vine.

For a more comprehensive understanding of my process, I encourage you to explore other 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, Part 9 – moss, sky and stone wall, and Part 10 – wee folk.

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.

Summertime: Part 5 – Baltimore Oriole (head and feet)

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Salley Mavor

Part 5 in the series of posts about making my piece Summertime features photos and videos documenting the process of creating the Baltimore Oriole’s head and feet.

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.

I wouldn’t call myself an avid bird watcher, but I do appreciate the subtle differences that make each species unique. For this piece, the trick was to capture the bird’s distinguishing features without being too scientific. To understand the nuances of an Oriole, I studied photos and made sketches, paying particular attention to the position, size and angle of its head, eyes and beak.

BEAK
I must have been so focused on making the bird’s hood and eye (it’s a glass bead) that I forgot to take photos of that part. So, let’s skip ahead to the beak. To make it pointy, I formed a wire extension and wrapped it with embroidery floss.

I articulated the shape of the beak with floss, stitching over and around, until it had a smooth and seamless appearance.

Watch this video to see how I stitched the beak. It even shows what the back looks like!

After the beak was finished, I embroidered black feathers with fly stitches on the neck and throat area.

I sewed the wing and tail (see Part 4) in place and got to work on making the Oriole’s feet.

FEET
I shaped the bird’s feet and legs with wire, twisting it around to form 4 toes – 1 short and 3 long. Then, I wrapped the wire with embroidery floss, winding the thread up and down until no shiny wire was exposed and the feet were the right thickness.

Watch this video to see how I constructed the legs and feet and attached them to the bird’s body.

Stay tuned for Part 6, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of making the rose vine. If you want to receive email notices when I publish new posts, please subscribe to this blog using the form below.

Summertime: Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body)

Posted on February 2, 2025 by Salley Mavor

Part 4 in the series of posts about making my piece Summertime features photos and videos documenting the process of creating the Baltimore Oriole’s body, including its breast, wing and tail.

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.

Enchanting Threads: The Art of Salley Mavor at the Albany Institute of History and Art

BALTIMORE ORIOLE
I chose a male Baltimore Oriole for the summer scene mostly because of its flashy appearance. They also epitomize the season for me. Pairs of orioles are frequent visitors to our yard in early summer, when we lure them with orange halves and grape jelly. I hadn’t made a bird this size since Birds of Beebe Woods (2012), which you can get a glimpse of on the wall in the following video.

First, I looked at photos of orioles and made a simple drawing that showed its size and proper proportions. Then, I cut the basic shape out of acid-free matte board and padded it with thick felt (which is similar to how I made pins early in my career). Throughout the process of making the bird, I referred to photos, especially when selecting colors and stitches for the body, wing, and tail.

I wanted to make the bird realistic enough to be recognized as a species, but patterned and abstracted in a way that made it fun to stitch. It ended up being something between a stylized bird and a biological illustration.

BREAST
For the oriole’s distinctive orange breast, I embroidered different combinations of fly stitches that are reminiscent of Faire Isle patterns. It brought me back to a dozen years ago, when I stitched the crow’s breast in Birds of Beebe Woods.

I used cotton flower thread, which has a matte finish that’s different from the glossy sheen of cotton embroidery floss. DMC flower thread is no longer available, so if you’re interested, Dutch Treat Designs has some of the discontinued thread in stock.

Watch a Stitch Minute video of embroidering the oriole’s breast with fly stitches.

WING
I usually work freehand without marks, because it’s hard to draw on fuzzy wool felt. In this case, I was able to make chalk pencil lines on the black felt wing.

Watch a Stitch Minute video of embroidering the bird’s wing.

TAIL
So much of a bird’s personality comes through in the angle and pose of its tail. Doing the stitching was the easy part. Positioning the tail and attaching it to the body took more patience and perseverance.

Watch a Stitch Minute video of embroidering and attaching the bird’s tail.

Stay tuned for Part 5, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of making the Baltimore Oriole’s head and feet. If you want to receive email notices when I publish new posts, please subscribe to this blog using the form below.