Studio News

Posted on June 4, 2023 by Salley Mavor

On a recent glorious afternoon, I sat outside and stitched. It was one of those idyllic moments, when I felt truly at peace, doing something I value, in a place I love. Some people read books to immerse themselves in another world. I do it with a needle and thread. It’s embarrassing to admit that when given the choice of reading or stitching, I pick stitching every time. That’s a good thing, because otherwise I’d never get anything done! Right now, I’m in the middle of making a summer scene in my series of seasonal landscapes. I usually wait until a piece is finished before writing about it, but this one is taking so long that I’m giving previews, like the Baltimore Oriole Sneak peek.

Grandma Salley and 4 month old Elias

One welcome change in my studio routine this year are the almost daily visits by my grandson Elias, who is now 4 months old. As you can imagine, this little guy is bringing about a shift in my priorities.

In this post, I share info about 2 upcoming exhibits, as well as photos and videos of some special parts of the summer scene, including roses, raspberries, trees, and tree houses. But first, I’d like to let you know about a magazine article about my 45-year art career and a fun and entertaining podcast interview that just came out,

MAGAZINE ARTICLE
The summer issue of Art Quilting Studio features a 12-page artist portfolio about my work. I sent the editor a large selection of photos to choose from and to my surprise, they printed everything! The article covers a lot of ground and describes how and why I came to do what I do. I’m excited that more people will be seeing and learning about my artwork for the first time! This issue of the magazine can be purchased here.

PODCAST
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Julie Wake, the very personable executive director of the the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, for an episode in their series of Creative Exchange Podcasts. Listen to Salley Mavor / Staying True to Yourself and Your Work here.

EXHIBITIONS
The next showing of Bedtime Stitches, the touring exhibition of original artwork for my picture book, MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World will be July 6 – Sept. 15, 2023 at the Southeastern Quilt and Textile Museum in Carrollton, GA. To see the tour schedule, please visit the exhibitions page.

THE WEE WORLDS OF SALLEY MAVOR

SOUTHERN VERMONT ARTS CENTER, Manchester, VT
ON VIEW: Saturday, September 30, 2023 – Sunday, January 7, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, September 30 from 2 to 4 P.M.
GALLERY TOUR with the artist at 3 P.M.

SUMMER SCENE PREVIEW
When the summer scene is finished, hopefully in time for my exhibit in Vermont this fall, I’ll write a series of posts that go into more detail, with commentary and photos that document my process. It will be the 4th in my seasonal landscape series. You can learn about how I made the other three, Frosty Morning, Mossy Glen and Harvest Time, in earlier posts on this blog. The images are printed as cards and jigsaw puzzles, which are available in my shop.

And now for the summer scene teaser!

Here’s a Stitch Minute video of making a felt rose. It’s an embellished version of a rose that Mimi Kirchner shared years ago on her blog.

I also made raspberries for the scene.

You can watch how I made them in this Stitch Minute video.

Here’s a close up of the tree, which is the main focal point.

I’ll leave with this little video of the tree houses in the summer scene. I just couldn’t resist playing! You may recognize the character peeking out as a member of the Woodland Family in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk: New Adventures. I’ll eventually make all new wee folk dolls to inhabit the landscape.

Tree houses in the summer scene.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog (top right column on the home page). 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 and/or Instagram

Baltimore Oriole sneak peek

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Salley Mavor

I’m right in the middle of making the summer scene in my series of seasonal landscapes. Normally, I wait until a piece is finished before writing blog posts about it, but I just have to give you a preview of what’s to come! This scene features a flashy male Baltimore Oriole, which I’m excited to show.

It’s been ten years since I made a bird this size, like the ones in Birds of Beebe Woods. Back then, I didn’t take many pictures while I worked. This time, I documented every stage of the process with photos and videos, which I’ve shared on Facebook and Instagram over the past month and now here in this post.

The Baltimore Oriole will be perched in the upper branches of a tree that has little huts nestled at the base. Like the other scenes in the series, Frosty Morning, Mossy Glen and Harvest Time, the summer landscape will be full of wee folk characters cavorting outside in nature. The first 3 seasons are available as Jigsaw Puzzles and Note Cards in my Etsy Shop. When its finished, the summer scene will also be reproduced as a card and puzzle.

Jigsaw Puzzles and Note Cards are available in my Etsy Shop.

I hope to finish the summer scene in a few months, so that all four seasons will be displayed together at my exhibition in Vermont this fall.

The Wee Worlds of Salley Mavor (includes Bedtime Stitches).
Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT
Sept. 30, 2023 – Jan. 7, 2024
Opening – Sat., Sept 30, 2 to 4 pm. Galley tour with the artist at 3 pm.

When the piece is completed, I’ll write my usual series of detailed posts about different aspects of how I work, like I’ve done with Frosty Morning, Mossy Glen and am currently doing with Harvest Time.

For now, I hope that you enjoy looking over my shoulder, while I work. The following five videos are condensed versions of different steps I used in creating the bird’s breast, beak, wing, tail, and feet.

Making the Breast

The videos aren’t intended to be tutorials, but you can pick up a lot of my stitching techniques. If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve probably heard my personal philosophy about sharing knowledge. Basically, I’m happy to give peeks at how I work, as long as the act of creating isn’t overly dissected, else it loses its magic.

This video shows how I created the beak.

Making the Beak

This video demonstrates how I stitched the wing.

Making the Wing

This video shows the process of making the tail.

Making the Wing

This video shows how I formed the feet.

Making the Feet

Now that the bird is finished, I’ve resumed working on other parts of the landscape. But, I have a feeling that this Baltimore Oriole, in all his orange glory will not want to share the stage with whatever and whomever shows up next!

Harvest Time – part 6 (underground)

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Salley Mavor

In Part 6 in the continuing series about making Harvest Time, I share photos and commentary about making the tunnels, roots, and stones in the underground portion of the landscape. In the coming weeks, I will post more stories that focus on different aspects of making the fall scene, including the wee folk figures, their storage containers, and the embroidered trees. So far, I’ve written the following posts:
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom

Harvest Time is the fall scene in a series of seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world, both real and imagined. Note cards and jigsaw puzzles of the this and other scenes in the series (Frosty Morning and Mossy Glen) are available in my Shop.

I’m never sure where my ideas come from. The usually appear in my head as pictorial concepts that ferment for a long time before transferring into my sketchbook and then as finished pieces. The fall scene lived in my imagination for many months before I began visualizing 3 separate areas – sky, a forest floor and below ground. I’ve always been fascinated by dioramas of underground tunnels and burrows dug by animals. I wanted to create similar storage areas for the wee folk to keep their fall harvest.

Once I became fixated with the idea of a cut-away underground view, I couldn’t wait to bring it to life! From the start, I knew that translating the picture in my mind’s eye into something real was going to require exploring different ways of working. While mulling over the possibilities, I decided to try both wet and dry felting, which I’ve dabbled in over the years.

Felting does have an appeal, but in the end, all that poking and meshing of wool fibers creates a uniform fuzzy texture that blends everything together. I wouldn’t ordinarily want that in my work because I’m more interested in creating lines and clear, defined edges. But for this project, a soft texture might be exactly what I needed for the dark soil below ground.

I also thought that felting would be a good way to form the concave shaped tunnel and storage areas. After reviewing the wet felting process on this YouTube tutorial, I wrapped a couple of stones and a curved stick with brown wool fleece and felted them in soapy water. When they dried, I cut through the thick felt and removed the stones and stick.

At this stage of the process, I needle felted the different parts together. An advantage to working with a barbed needle is that with enough jabbing, you can make seamless joints. Then, I cut out openings in a sheet of red felt (it happened to be what I had), inserted the tunnel, and needle felted them together.

To create the soil color, I needle felted layers of brown fleece on top of the red felt background.

I made the underground roots by covering wire with felt, the same way that I make trees.

The stones are made with 2 layers of heather shades of felt, folded over and sewn on the back.

Once the roots and stones were sewn in place, I could go in and add embroidered details like the chain stitched finer roots…

and French knot “dirt”.

After all of the manic stabbing with a barbed needle, it was a relief to get back into stitching mode. It felt great to get out a large embroidery needle, thread it with tapestry yarn, and create a distinctive texture that contrasted with the fleecy wool.

With the underground section in place and most of the landscape complete, I could now begin to focus on populating the scene with the wee folk who lived and worked there.

Please stay tuned for more stories about making Harvest Time, including the wee folk figures, storage containers, and embroidered trees.
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom

Revisiting Mary and her lamb

Posted on April 12, 2023 by Salley Mavor

Today, I’d like to revisit the classic rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb, which I illustrated in 1995. The smaller board book version was published 10 years later. It’s hard to believe that 28 years have gone by since it first came out. The reality hits me, though, when I meet grownup people who remember the book from their childhood. Both versions are out of print, but you may be able to find used copies online.

Mary Had a Little Lamb remains one of my favorite projects and I’ve wanted to reuse the artwork from the book for some time. So, I’m happy to say that I just added 4 new note cards with images from the book to my Etsy Shop. There’s Mary and her lamb in the garden, in the barn, in the kitchen and in an apple orchard. The cards are available in 4 or 8 card samplers. Individual designs are also sold separately in packs of 4.

Note cards are available in my Etsy Shop..

All of the original 3-dimensional scenes I made for Mary Had a Little Lamb are in private collections. Fortunately, several owners are willing to loan them from time to time for exhibition purposes. Last summer, 8 pieces from the book were in my retrospective at the Brick Store Museum in Maine. And this coming fall, I hope to include a group of them in The Wee Words of Salley Mavor at the Southern Vermont Arts Center.

Judy Sue Goodwin-Sturges, my former teacher from RISD, generously loans pieces from her art collection for exhibitions. Picking them up is also a good excuse to visit her in Providence, RI. By the way, take a look at her shelves full of Guatemalan huipils behind us!

Mary Had a Little Lamb – apple tree note card

When I borrow the pieces, I often remove the stretched artwork from its frame to clean the inside of the glass. Then, I can take close up photos, like this one of Mary and her lamb in the barn and others you can see below.

Mary Had a Little Lamb – garden note card

Back in the 90’s, I embroidered character’s faces on hand-me-down fabric from my grandmother. The cloth was originally an old woolen petticoat that had been laundered so many times that it became felted. It was the perfect weight to work with and had a sturdy and forgiving texture that put up with multiple stabbings from a needle and thread. Eventually, I used up all the fabric and could never find anything to replace it. By then, I’d begun painting faces on wooden beads and I really didn’t miss embroidering faces. Sometimes, I would spend all day ripping out the stitching and starting again to get the right facial expression.

In this close up you can probably tell that the strawberries are made from polymer clay. The basket is made of wire wrapped in embroidery floss.

Mary Had a Little Lamb – kitchen note card

The blue and white knitting in the mother’s lap was originally part of a sculpture of a knitter sitting on a couch that I made in about 1980, which you can see below. I figured that the doll didn’t need her knitting any more, so I stole it and gave it to Mary’s mother. I’ve never been much of knitter and this would save me having to make a new one. And besides, it was the perfect scale!

Practically everyone who sees this asks, “Did you actually knit this on those tiny knitting needles?” I suppose it’s possible to knit with tooth picks, but I’m not that neurotic. Remember, making art is all about creating illusions. I used real needles, the kind that are for knitting baby booties and such, and then replaced them with with tooth picks.

Enter my Etsy Shop here.
A note to my international followers – Due to the unreasonably high cost of shipping overseas, I now only take orders from the USA and Canada.

Harvest Time – part 5 (toadstool mushroom)

Posted on April 1, 2023 by Salley Mavor

In Part 5 in the continuing series about making Harvest Time, I share photos and commentary about making the purple toadstool mushroom and the wee folk forager sitting under it. In the coming weeks, I will continue to post stories that focus on different aspects of making the fall scene, including the other wee folk figures, storage containers, tunnels, roots, and stones. So far, I’ve written the following posts:
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 6 shows the process of making the underground

I don’t know why I didn’t include mushrooms in the original sketch. It seems so obvious now, especially for a fall landscape. The idea of putting one in the scene came later, when I shifted over the stump and created a place to fill on the right horizon.

Toadstool mushrooms have popped out in my artwork for over 40 years. These are some mushroom houses I made in 1979, back when I used a sewing machine.

When I went into business selling fairy kits in 1998, I designed a logo with a red-capped mushroom house. My 10 year stint making kits is long gone, but I still use the same logo.

In this scene from 2009, I used both real mushrooms from the supermarket and more fanciful ones that I made with polymer clay and painted kid leather.

This mushroom with a fairy taking shelter underneath is in my 2010 picture book, Pocketful of Posies, illustrating the rhyme, “Rain on the green grass, and rain on the tree; Rain on the housetop, but not on me.”

For Harvest Time, I chose a different type of mushroom. The idea of a purple toadstool struck my fancy, so I researched the Inky Cap variety. Besides being attracted to the purple/orange color combo, I looked forward to replicating the texture on the cap.

To begin, I drew the mushroom to size and used a paper cutout as a guide. It took some fudging to figure out the size and shape to cut the felt, because the front piece of the cap would be curved and sticking out about 1/2″,

I sewed wire along the rim of the cap to help hold its curve. After covering the wire with stitches, I created an uneven edge with messy loops, so it would look more realistic. To make the bumpy texture on top, I stitched French knots with different shades of purple and orange embroidery floss.

To make the stem, I cut out a thin strip of felt and covered it with lines of chain stitching.

I forgot exactly how I did this part, but it looks like I added a felt stem back piece that was reinforced with iron-on interfacing material. I must have thought it needed stiffening, since felt by itself is usually too floppy. Also, I probably stuffed the hollow cavity with wool fleece to keep it from collapsing.

I chain stitched scales with a contrasting shade of orange thread to the inside of the cap and sewed on the stem.

The mushroom and surrounding area looked lonely and plain, so I made a wee person to sit underneath.

To make a figure, I formed an armature with 24 gauge jewelry wire and wrapped it with thread. This is the same basic technique that I teach in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, but on a smaller scale. I didn’t make separate clothing, but faux knitted a shirt and vest directly onto the body with chain stitching. The skirt is an artificial flower.

This Stitch Minute video shows faux knitting for a character in the spring landscape, Mossy Glen.

I painted a face on a wooden bead and glued braids and an acorn cap on top. Another acorn cap served as a container for glass bead “food”, which I sewed together in a bunch. The beads were sewn in place through drill holes in the acorn cap.

At this stage of the process, miscellaneous parts piled up, waiting to be assembled at the end, when everything is sewn to the background fabric. Please stay tuned for more stories about making Harvest Time, including the other wee folk figures, storage containers, tunnels, roots, and stones.

Harvest Time – part 4 (embroidered plants)

Posted on March 19, 2023 by Salley Mavor

In Part 4 in the series about making Harvest Time, I share photos and commentary about embroidering plants to fill in around the 3-D felt leaves shown in Part 3. When planning out this piece, I wanted to come up with a way to separate the above ground front yard from the underground cutaway portion. I ended up embellishing gardens on pieces of felt that overlap the soil, roots, and stones below.

I use a combination of flat embroidery and 3-D forms in my artwork because I think it’s more dynamic and eye catching that way. I also like the process of doing both, so I mix it up to keep myself interested.

This part of the process was more free form and reminded me of the simple embroidered foliage I made in the illustrations for Hey, Diddle, Diddle.

To stabilize the floppy pieces of felt, I stitched and wrapped wire along the outside edges and then embroidered blades of grass.

Then I doodled stems with chain stitches and added French knot seeds.

This kind of work is portable, so I carried around all of the parts and supplies wherever I went…

…and did most of the stitching in front of the wood stove.

The orange and red leaves are chain stitched with DMC flower thread, which unfortunately has been discontinued. It’s thicker and not as shiny as regular embroidery floss and has a sturdy feel that I find satisfying. I treasure my supply of flower thread and have enough to last my lifetime.

Glass beads make great berries.

I glued a piece of driftwood to the top of one section to make a perch for a wee folk forager to sit on. Doesn’t the whole thing look like a shoe!

I also created a mossy patch of front lawn to go just below the doorway with hundreds, if not thousands of French knots.

I padded the back of the embellished pieces with layers of thick felt so that they would stick out and float above the cutaway underground portion, which I’ll get to later in the series.

In future posts, I will focus on different aspects of making Harvest Time, including the toad stool mushroom, wee folk figures, storage containers, needle felted tunnels and cold cellars, roots, and stones.

The overview introduces the series.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom
Part 6 shows the process of making the underground

What’s NEW in my shop?

Posted on March 4, 2023 by Salley Mavor

With Spring presumably right around the corner and Easter coming on April 9th, it seems like a good time to let you know about some new items in my Shop. I’ve added 3 more jigsaw puzzles, including Rabbitat, a bunny filled puzzle for children, made with 2″ x 3″ sized pieces. I’m also offering CDs of the award-winning Maestro Classics version of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, which features my artwork on the case and 20-page activity booklet.

RABBITAT, the 20-piece 9″ x 12″ jigsaw puzzle for children and other new items are available in my shop here.

When setting out to make Rabbitat in 2011, I had just two things in mind – a driftwood house and a rabbit shaped topiary. As I built up the scene, an imagined scenario unfolded. Over time, a family of rabbits came to live in the house and a whole landscape grew around the topiary.

RABBITAT is the focus in this short documentary film about my work.

For a long time, fans have suggested that my artwork would translate well into puzzle form. I thought so, too, but was too busy stitching to do anything about it. After years of searching, I finally found a high quality and economically feasible manufacturing arrangement. So, last fall I tested the market with two puzzle designs: Birds of Beebe Woods and Harvest Time, the fall scene in my seasons series. The response was so positive, that I was encouraged to add the Spool Heart puzzle for Valentine’s Day.

Jigsaw Puzzles: Birds of Beebe Woods, Harvest Time, Spool Heart

Along with the children’s puzzle, Rabbitat, I’ve added two more scenes from my series of seasonal landscapes to the jigsaw puzzle collection: Frosty Morning (winter) and Mossy Glen (spring). So, when will all 4 seasons be completed? The summer scene is coming along slowly but surely and I hope to have it finished, photographed, and made into a puzzle and cards by the fall. You can follow its progress on Facebook and Instagram.

NEW Jigsaw Puzzles: Frosty Morning and Mossy Glen

Mossy Glen jigsaw puzzle

Peter and the Wolf CD
I just loved creating the artwork to go along with the Maestro Classics CD of Peter and the Wolf. The Russian story and my folk art style were a perfect match it was a joy to bring Peter and the animals to life.

In addition to designing the cover illustration with Peter and the cat in the tree, with the bird taunting the wolf, I made a scene with Peter, his grandfather, and the duck to be used inside the case.

I also made individual characters from the story, including the hunters, to be used in a little activity booklet of games and information that comes with the CD. After 10 years in print, the Maestro Classics production of Peter and the Wolf continues to be a best seller!

MARCH SALE – Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring! 10% off all winter items.
Please come on over to my shop and have look.
Free Shipping on orders of $35.00 or more.
A note to my international fans: I’m really sorry, but due to the high cost of shipping overseas, I now only ship to the US and Canada.

Baby Banner for Elias

Posted on February 26, 2023 by Salley Mavor

For the past 15 years or so, I’ve made personalized gifts for friends and family that commemorate special events like weddings and births. These embellished felt banners combine two of my favorite things, hand embroidery and handwriting. You can see this and other banners by scrolling through the archives here.

Now, I finally had the opportunity to make a banner celebrating a birth in my immediate family! Last month, our son Ian and his wife Liz became the parents of our first grandchild! Little Elias was born on Jan. 18th, 2023, 100 years to the day after my father.

We are all completely in love with with this little guy! I just love watching my son interacting with his son. As an extra bonus, the new family lives practically across the street, so we get to see Elias all the time. I can already feel my focus shifting into Grandma mode, which is a welcome change. Hopefully, there will be room in my heart for both art and being a Grandma.

Naturally, I quickly got to work making a banner for Elias. After picking out the basic color scheme, I wrote his first and middle names in cursive handwriting on paper. Using that as a template, I made a 3-dimensional copy with memory thread. That way, I knew what length of wire to use.

I wrapped the memory thread (or wire) with 3 strands of embroidery floss.
UPDATE: I misspelled Laszlo, which is the baby’s maternal great-grandfather’s name! Watch this video to see the remake.

Remaking Laszlo

I usually use variegated floss to wrap the wire, which can look like stripes on the 2nd pass. The wire ends are bent over and wrapped, so that no raw ends are hanging out. It’s similar to the technique I use to make doll limbs in my how-to book Felt Wee Folk.

When I finished wrapping Lazslo and positioned it on the felt background, there wasn’t enough contrast, so I gave it a candy stripe to make it pop more.

I use an ironing board as a work surface. Here, you can see what I’m working on in the middle and on either side are printouts of banners I’ve made in the past, which I used for reference.

I had to wrap the numbers a couple of times because the size was off.

I edged the green felt panel with blanket stitches, using variegated pima cotton thread from the Caron Collection,

I wrote out the birth weight in green first and then did it over in yellow to create more contrast, which seemed to be a recurring theme with this banner.

After sewing the lettering onto the green background panel, I chain-stitched a vine to fill the open space between the names.

Out of my stash, I selected bone beads to make a decorative separator between the names and birth date.

I then sewed the green panel to the lavender background felt.

To make the banner rigid at the top, I made a sleeve and inserted a piece of wood.

I looked through my driftwood collection and found the right sized stick that would work as a hanging bar. I drilled holes big enough to thread cord through.

I fed cord through the holes and a metal bead separator, hiding the tail threads on the back.

This banner will soon hang on Elias’s bedroom door. Welcome to the world little one! We look forward to getting to know you!

Bedtime Stitches in Pacific Northwest

Posted on February 19, 2023 by Salley Mavor

Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, WA

I am happy to announce that Bedtime Stitches, the traveling exhibition of original artwork for my picture book, MY BED, is on view at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, WA through April 30th. This is the westernmost location on the tour and I hope that many of you in the area (including BC, Canada) will make the trip to see the show. To find out where it’s going in the next couple of years, please visit the exhibitions page.

MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World is available worldwide where books are sold, including from online vendors. Autographed copies can be purchased in my Etsy Shop here.

The exhibition of embroidered bas-relief sculptures brings the viewer on an international journey, showing children in varying cultures and home environments around the world. Each intricately rendered scene captures the spirit of a different place and way of life, all the while illuminating the universal theme of children sleeping safe in their beds.

I’m especially excited to have my work at the museum because the Pacific Northwest has such an active quilt and fiber arts community. People are already flocking to see the show and telling their friends about it. Recent visitors wrote, “The pieces are even more amazing in person!” and “I found myself standing in front of each frame and ‘dreaming’. I will go back.”

In addition to the framed original artwork, visitors will see several interpretive boards that touch on different aspects of my working process, including this one about the animal icons featured throughout the book. While I worked on the animals, I took photos along the way and shared how I made each one. Click the animals to link to posts:

Rooster, Camel, Parrot, Elephant, Goldfish, Cat, Duck, Sheep,
Rabbit, Cow, Crocodile, Giraffe, Dog, Pony.

I am grateful to the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum for their enthusiastic invitation to show my work and willingness to book it years in advance! The exhibition is spread out on the 3rd floor of their beautiful Tudor-style Victorian mansion.

Bedtime Stitches is currently booked through 2024 with the possibility of being extended into 2025. Interested museums and curators are welcome to contact me (Salley at weefolkstudio.com) for information about hosting the exhibit.

Adaptive Sled for the snow scene

Posted on February 12, 2023 by Salley Mavor

This father and child pair is included in my winter themed display that is currently on view at Boston Children’s Hospital. The exhibit, which I wrote about in a previous post, is in the Mini-Museum in the Hale lobby, not far from the main entrance to the hospital at 300 Longwood Ave., Boston, Massachusetts through March 15th.

The hospital’s art program manager requested that I make a little adaptive sled for riders with disabilities to include in the snow scene. For reference, she sent a link to this futuristic looking contraption. At first I balked at the idea because of such short notice during the holidays. But, I decided to give it a try, as long as she understood that it would be a naturalistic wee folk version.

I knew it would take at least a couple of days to make, so I pushed aside other impending deadlines and focused entirely on the sled. I picked out a father and child from the collection of sample dolls I’d made for the Winter Play chapter of my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk.

I studied the photo of the adaptive sled and and made sketches of its basic structure. I measured the figures and bent wire to form the seat, back frame and handle bars.

I wrapped embroidery floss around the wire frame, making several passes until the shiny metal was thoroughly covered and the thread looked smooth and even. Wrapping is the most time-consuming part! You can’t really rush the process, otherwise it comes out lumpy and crude looking.

I formed the lower frame and runners out of wire and bound it to the seat frame with thread. At this stage the wrapping was quite fussy, with lots of maneuvering in and around joints.

I added arms to the seat with a finer gauge wire.

Up until this point, I hadn’t chosen exactly how to finish the seat – felt or floss or a combination. Since the sled was looking more and more like an old fashioned caned chair, I decided to go all out and weave the seat. I’m not sure how warp and weft apply here, but I basically set up a loom.

In this video, you can see the weaving process from the top and the bottom.

Here’s a video of the installation in Boston Children’s Hospital.

I’ve already been contacted by several people who saw the display while going to a doctor’s appointment with their child or grandchild. Hearing their reactions warms my heart and makes it feel like the effort was worth it! If you’re in the area, please stop by the Boston Children’s Hospital’s Mini Museum.