Since becoming a grandma, I’ve started a yearly tradition of making personalized ornaments of my grandchildren to give to their parents. This year I made Elias (almost 3) and Eddie (almost 2) dressed in their winter outfits. The dolls were constructed the same way as the 4″ figures in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk.

The cousins are starting to converse a bit and I’m looking forward to eavesdropping on their conversations as they get older. They are still very much in parallel play mode, which seems perfectly natural to me. In fact, I’ve spent much of life in a parallel state, happily focused on my own thing, while others do their own thing.

Making the dolls

The first step was to paint the boys’ faces on wooden beads. Then, I formed their bodies with pipe cleaners, tapestry wool and cotton batting. Stitching their felt clothing was the most fun! For the Elias doll, I copied a navy blue jacket with red trim that he’s been wearing.

The following Stitch Minute video shows the process of stitching Elias’s clothes.

I used silver metallic thread to chain-stitch the zipper on Eddie’s jacket.

When it came time to sew on the hood, I glued a rectangular felt piece to the top of the bead head. That way it would say put while I fussed with a needle and thread. After sewing the front and sides of the hood to the jacket neck, I trimmed the felt piece to fit around the back of the bead head.

Here’s another Stitch Minute video that shows the process of stitching Eddie’s outfit.

I’m already looking forward to making next year’s ornaments! If you want to receive email notices when I publish new posts, please subscribe to this blog using the form below.

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.

Happy Winter Solstice! On this shortest day of the year, I invite you to watch a one minute video that features a selection of my art that celebrates winter. I also sing the first snippet of the carol, “In the Bleak Mid-winter.” The winter wonderland that you see here is hardly bleak, but I think that Christina Rossetti’s words beautifully evoke the coming season. She wrote the poem in 1872, and it was put to music in the early 1900’s by Gustav Holst.

In the bleak mid-winter.
Frosty wind made moan.
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow, on snow.
In the bleak mid-winter. Long ago.

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.

Winter arrived overnight on Cape Cod and snow is still falling as I write this. It’s the kind of snow that comes down gently and sticks to every branch. No howling wind and drifts to shovel, just a blanket of peace and quiet. What better way to feel the spirit of the holidays?

With that in mind, I’d like to let you know about the opportunity to see my Pocketful of Posies tree and come to an all-ages Storytime at the Cahoon Museum. For those of you from far away, I’ve posted photos of the tree, with lots of closeup views.

Pocketful of Posies Holiday Tree
If you live locally, please stop by the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit, MA. My collection of nursery rhyme ornaments are displayed in the Pocketful of Posies Holiday Tree thru Dec. 21st.

Storytime with Salley Mavor
Please join me on Sat., Dec. 20 at 11 AM for an all-ages Storytime. After I read selections from My Bed and Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes, I’ll be available to greet visitors, sign books, and answer questions.

I originally made these ornaments in 2012 to decorate a tree for the Concord Museum‘s annual Family Trees: A Celebration of Children’s Literature event. Every year, the museum organizes a slew of volunteers who craft handmade decorations for dozens of story trees inspired by classic and recent children’s books. When I was notified that my book, Pocketful of Posies, was selected as one of the titles in 2012, I offered to decorate the tree myself.

Over a period of 2 months, I made a collection of vignettes that feature different nursery rhyme characters from the book, from Humpty Dumpty to Old Mother Hubbard to Little Boy Blue.

The rhymes are acted out inside felt covered wire and wood frames that serve as little stage platforms. When I made these, I’d just completed Birds of Beebe Woods and was looking for other ways to incorporate felt covered wire into my work.

The figures are variations of the doll projects in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk. I loved revisiting the nursery rhyme characters in a totally 3-d form!

The ornament collection was recently displayed with my Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion, in my exhibition, Bedtime Stitches & Other Works at the Mariposa Museum & World Culture Center in Peterborough, NH. Before the show was extended, I’d already promised the ornaments to the Cahoon Museum, so they were taken down and shipped home. Everything else in the show is still at the Mariposa thru Jan. 4, 2026!

I hope that you enjoy this glimpse at the vignettes. Season’s Greetings to you!

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.

Today, I’d like to revisit Birds of Beebe Woods (2012) and share thoughts about what inspired this collection of hand stitched birds, as well as give a behind the scenes peek at how I made it 13 years ago.

See Birds of Beebe Woods in person
The framed bas-relief piece is currently on display at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor thru Dec. 31, 2025. In January, it will return for an extended stay at Eight Cousins Bookshop (199 Main St. location) in Falmouth, MA.

Origin Story
In the spring of 2012, I was invited to make a piece for a group fiber art show celebrating Beebe Woods, the beloved town forest in my hometown of Falmouth, MA. The exhibition, titled The Intimate Woods: A Celebration of Beebe Woods was shown at Highfield Hall in the fall of 2012.

The assignment was to use fiber techniques to make art inspired by Beebe Woods. All of the artists in the group where local and quite familiar with the numerous paths and stone walls crisscrossing the 388 acre wooded conservation land. Normally, I wouldn’t be able to fit in a months-long project like this on such short notice, but thankfully my schedule was open. It helped that I’d (temporarily) sworn off doing another children’s book after the recent 3-year marathon to complete Pocketful of Posies.

The 12 Birds
Listed clock-wise from the top, the birds are female cardinal, nuthatch, black-throated green warbler, male cardinal, wren, downy woodpecker, blue-jay, robin, goldfinch, cedar waxwing, American crow and chickadee.

Show and Tell
It was clear from the beginning that I wanted to do more than just convey the natural wooded environment in Beebe Woods. A landscape devoid of characters, whether they be human or animal, wouldn’t hold my attention for long – I need eyeballs to connect with! I chose to portray birds, making them realistic enough to be recognizable, but patterned and abstracted in a way that made them fun to stitch. I wouldn’t call myself an avid bird watcher, but after closely studying birds for this piece, I’ve become more in love with them.

The first step was to jot down ideas in thumbnail sketches. The drawing I liked best was a group of birds perched on branches, framed by a woodsy border. At this point, the birds were pretty stylized and more like place holders. Looking back, I realize that I must have been influenced by my grandfather’s Victorian glass dome with taxidermy birds that sits in my studio.

Next, I concentrated on the border, which set the stage for the collection of birds.

This may be my first example of making “felt filigree” sculpture, which involves covering wire with strips of felt to form intersecting lines. Felt covered wire has been a mainstay in my pieces for several years, including the recent collection of botanical sculptures hanging in the gallery entrances to my exhibition at the New England Quilt Museum.

After constructing the felt filigree border, I researched bird species that visit our corner of Cape Cod and picked out ones of a variety of sizes and plumage colors. I cut out paper birds and juggled them around. The finished composition wouldn’t be clear until the very end, after all of the birds were completed. I remember thinking that different birds would never mix together this way in real life. Then I reminded myself that I was making art, which didn’t have to conform to reality.

I printed out photos and illustrations of the birds to use as reference. The crow insisted on being made first and then I added the other birds one at a time.

I knew that the success of this piece was hinged on the dominant positioning of the crow and the strategic placement of the smaller birds around it.

My approach to rendering the birds changed during the 4 months that I worked on the piece. Toward the end, when I sewed the nuthatch, chickadee, wren, and warbler, I referred to photographs more closely and was caught up in making them identifiable and naturalistic. 

The birds aren’t exactly life size, but they are close. The little wren could stand on its own, so I took its picture before sewing it in place.

I cut the basic shapes of the birds out of wool felt and then embroidered their feather patterns.

I’m glad that I made the decision back in 2012 to not sell Birds of Beebe Woods. Before that, I sold just about everything I made, except for my Self Portrait, which was too personal to let go. Now, I don’t sell any original work. By holding on to these pieces, I am ensuring that there is a well-rounded and representative body of work ready for exhibition purposes. This way, many more people can experience my work in person!

SHOP
Printed reproductions (puzzles, posters, note cards, and bookmarks) of Birds of Beebe Woods are available in my Esty Shop.

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.