About Salley Mavor

About Salley Mavor

“My aim is to breathe life and emotion into embroidery, an art form that is often perceived as purely decorative.”
Salley mavor

A needle is my tool, thread is my medium and stitches are my marks. For over 45 years, I’ve created 3-dimensional hand-stitched miniature worlds that range from precious to poignant to provocative. My art serves a variety of purposes: it appears as illustrations in children’s books, stand-alone framed artwork, and stop-motion animation.

There is a distinctive over-the-top quality to my art that stands outside of the mainstream. A combination of storytelling imagery, innovative techniques, fervent craftsmanship, and the interplay of familiar, yet intriguing materials set it apart.

While I take delight in every careful stitch, it is the spirit of play and the pursuit of a broader visual narrative that propels my work forward. My objective is to move beyond the confines of embroidery as a medium and create art that is valued for its message and emotional resonance as well as its workmanship.

The art I make and the driving force behind it stem from a lifelong, insatiable desire to invent and make things with my hands. This deep love for the tactile process has always been central to my creative approach, shaping everything I have done from childhood through to the present day. My wish is for people of all ages to connect with my art in personal and meaningful ways.

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Where did this doll-infested needle and thread universe come from? It began at the height of the baby boom, in a family of introverts who were either making things or staring into space. You could say that we excelled at parallel play.

Detail from “Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion”

Education
While studying illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1970’s, an insightful teacher encouraged me to tap into my crafty and playful side. This newfound sense of freedom felt exhilarating—an organic, joyful expression straight from the heart. No longer confined to traditional art mediums, I discovered that working with stitching and soft sculpture allowed my ideas to come alive in new and unexpected ways. For most of my career I have followed this path, creating stitched scenes in bas-relief, much like miniature, shallow stage sets, with figures imposed on embellished fabric backgrounds.

Books – My 3-dimensional artwork is photographed and reproduced in children’s books, including the 2010 award-winning Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes and My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep Around the World. My bestselling how-to book of doll projects, Felt Wee Folk: New Adventures continues to inspire creativity.

Shop – Personally autographed books, cards, jigsaw puzzles, notebooks, and posters with printed reproductions of my embroidered scenes are available in my Etsy Shop.

Birds of Beebe Woods poster, cards, puzzles and notebooks are available in my Etsy Shop

Sale of Original Artwork – My original pieces are no longer available for sale. I have made the decision to retain all works currently in my possession. 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, I can maintain a collection that accurately reflects my artistic vision and creative journey. Printed reproductions of my work are available in my Esty Shop.

Sharing Knowledge – I do not teach classes. However, this blog is full of informative and inspiring photos, videos, and descriptions of projects I’ve made. My how-to book Felt Wee Folk provides step-by-step instructions for making wee folk dolls, with many examples and patterns. To learn my personal philosophy about sharing knowledge and artistic privacy, please read this post: to teach or not to teach.

Animation
After the 2016 presidential election, I formed a satirical wee folk drama troupe, The Wee Folk Players (they’re a stitch). Also, my husband Rob Goldsborough and I made a short stop-motion animated film titled Liberty and Justice: A Cautionary Tale in the Land of the Free.

Screen shot from “Liberty and Justice” animation

My solo exhibit Liberty and Justice was abruptly cancelled in 2018 at its original venue due to its political content. The show was generously picked up by the New England Quilt Museum and the Cotuit Center for the Arts, and portions were included in The Art of Cute at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk, Maine. You can watch my interview about the Liberty and Justice exhibit on WGBH TV and read the post Finding My Voice, which includes an excerpt of my talk about making art that is both precious and provocative.

EXHIBITIONS

To see a schedule of current and upcoming exhibitions of my original bas-relief artwork, including the Bedtime Stitches national tour, please visit the Exhibitions Page.

My most recent book, MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World was published in 2020. You can see blog posts showing the book’s progress here. SALLEY MAVOR: Bedtime Stitches, the touring exhibition of original bas-relief artwork for the book is scheduled into 2027. The current list of venues is here. Inquiries from museums are welcome. For information about hosting the show, please use the contact form below.

See how I made the illustrations for my new picture book, MY BED in this 8-minute documentary.

I live and work on Cape Cod, in Falmouth, Massachusetts. For answers to frequently asked question, please go to the FAQ Page. Contact me using the form below or write to P.O. Box 152, Woods Hole, MA 02543.

Autographed books, prints, puzzles, cards, notebooks and posters are available in my Etsy shop.

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Social Media: Follow me at BlueSky, Facebook and Instagram.
Shop: Autographed books, posters, puzzles, notebooks and cards are available in my Etsy shop.
Contact me via the form above or write to P.O. Box 152, Woods Hole, MA 02543

PODCASTS:

The Object Itself Podcast : Salley Mavor shares the inspiration and process behind her Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion. Published 1/23/25

NeedleXChange PODCAST: Salley Mavor – Telling Wee Folk Tales PART 1 and PART 2. Recorded 11/8/24
School of Stitched Textiles PODCAST: Textile Talk with Salley Mavor. Recorded 9/26/24.
Creative Exchange PODCAST with the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod. Staying True to Yourself and Your Work with Salley Mavor. Recorded 1/6/23
Craft Industry Alliance PODCAST with Mimi Kirchner and Salley Mavor. Recorded 6/1/15

INTERVIEWS

Watch TEXTILE TALK: Textiles in 3D with Salley Mavor, Barbara Schneider, and Jean Sredl, presented by SAQA. Recorded 5/29/24.
Read an interview with the Embroiderer’s Guild of America
Read this interview to find out about my foray into political satire
Read my thoughts about artistic privacy and when to tell how and when not to.
Watch WGBH OPEN STUDIO interview
Read my acceptance speech for the 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award
Read an interview with Create Whimsy
Read an interview with Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Watch a 2016 Interview with Falmouth Community TV

Book trailer for Felt Wee Folk – New Adventures

Information

Autographed books, posters, cards and jigsaw puzzles are available in my Etsy shop.
To see a list of all of my books, go to My Books.
Watch videos about my work: Videos Page
For info about exhibits of my original work, visit the Exhibitions Page.
Frequently asked questions: FAQ Page

Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion (pictured below) is on semi-permanent display at the Woods Hole Public Library. Posters of the piece are available in my Shop here.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky.

Wool felt is one of my favorite materials to work with—right up there with embroidery thread. I love it for its versatility and stability, and most of all because the cut edges don’t fray. Wool felt is a pleasure to use. It feels better in your hands and offers a level of integrity and durability that synthetic fabrics just can’t match.

Sorting pieces of wool felt in my studio.

Once you’ve worked with wool felt, it’s hard to go back to the inexpensive acrylic sheets commonly found in craft stores—like trading a polyester pantsuit for cotton, wool, or linen. Many online businesses sell wool felt, from garish commercially dyed colors to softer, plant dyed, and “heather” shades. Sources for purchasing wool felt are at the end of this post.

“There Was an Old Woman” from Pocketful of Posies

Like many other children born in the 1950s, my first experience with wool felt was through making doll clothes. The moment I mastered sewing snaps onto felt outfits for my Troll dolls, a new world of possibilities opened up. I can still remember wondering which was the “right” way to sew on snaps: make the stitches jump from hole to hole or stitch around the outside of the snap. It’s still a conundrum.

Detail from My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World

I don’t recall coming into contact with genuine wool felt again until 1988, when my children began attending the Waldorf School of Cape Cod. Handwork was part of the daily curriculum—knitting, woodworking, and sewing with wool felt. At the time, many Waldorf schools around the country were supplied with naturally dyed wool yarn and wool felt from Textile Reproductions, a small family business here in Massachusetts.

I was thrilled to find such thick, luscious wool felt in a pleasing array of colors. For nearly ten years, I regularly ordered felt from Textile Reproductions—until they discontinued dyeing felt in 1997. Luckily, I heard about their plans in time to drive to their house and buy as much felt as I could, including their unevenly dyed “seconds”, which I considered the most desirable. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found a comparable substitute to recommend.

Why the Terms Get Mixed Up
Before continuing, I want to clarify something — I use felt (noun) in my pieces. I very rarely do felting (verb). It bothers me when my work is labeled “felting”, because the process of making felt is entirely different than using the finished product to make something else. It’s like the difference between weaving fabric and sewing a dress with fabric.

In short:
Felt (noun): a fabric you can cut and stitch.
To felt / felting (verb): manipulating and meshing wool fibers with wet or dry methods to form sheets of felt or three-dimensional felted forms.

“The Crooked Man” from Pocketful of Posies

Felting has a rich history and dates back to ancient times—even before weaving and knitting were widely adopted. Today, needle felting is especially popular, with a unlimited supply videos, kits, and how-to instructions available online. (Needle felting is done by repeatedly stabbing wool fleece with a barbed needle.) With that kind of mainstream familiarity, it’s easy to see how felt (the noun) and felting (the verb) are becoming interchangeable in some people’s minds.

I’ve tried both wet felting and needle felting—but for the most part, I’d rather spend time embroidering with thread. For me, felt (and felting) is a starting point, not a completed piece of art; It’s a base or structure on which to build a world, using a variety of techniques and materials. Many of my picture books, including Pocketful of Posies and My Bed feature illustrations made with wool felt.

Exhibition News
I’m excited that the touring exhibition of original artwork for my book,
My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World will be at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, CA
Oct. 31 , 2026 – April 18, 2027. The date of my visit TBA.

Felting definitely has its appeal, but the process—poking and meshing wool fibers—creates an overall, uniform fuzzy texture that tends to blend details together. That’s not usually what I want as the finished look in my work. I’m more interested in using thread and a combination of materials to create contrast, lines, and clearly defined edges.

For a recent project (see image below), a soft texture was exactly what was needed to depict soil. I used both wet felting and needle felting techniques to create the tunnels and burrows in the cut-away underground section of Harvest Time, the fall scene in my series of seasonal landscapes. To learn about the process of making Harvest Time, please visit this post.

Needle felted underground burrow in Harvest Time

Where to Buy Wool Felt Online
Many online businesses sell wool felt in a wide range of colors, from bold commercially dyed shades to softer plant-dyed and “heather” tones. Here are a few sources to explore:
A Child’s Dream: Premium-quality 100% wool felt.
Sweet Emma Jean: A more affordable rayon/wool blend.
The Olive Sparrow (Toronto, Canada): A wide selection of wool felt.

Project from Felt Wee Folk: New Adventures

100% wool felt is pricey—but it’s often worth it. The doll-clothes pattern pieces from my how-to book Felt Wee Folk don’t require much material, so a little can go a long way. The book is available worldwide where books are sold. Autographed copies with extra goodies are for sale in my Etsy Shop.

Felt Wee Folk: New Adventures with extra goodies sold in my Etsy Shop

To keep up with new posts, 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 and/or Instagram.

SALLEY MAVOR

WEE FOLK STUDIO