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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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