Birds of Beebe Woods

Printed reproductions are available as 18″ x 24″ posters or note cards in my Etsy shop. 

About the artwork: Birds of Beebe Woods was made for a fiber art exhibit celebrating a beloved forest in my home town of Falmouth, Massachusetts in 2012. The finished dimensions are 30″ h x 24″ w x 1.5″ d.  In my piece, I wanted to feature wildlife as well as convey the natural environment of the 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. When planning the birds piece, 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.

Update:The original Birds of Beebe Woods will be heading south this spring, to the Upcountry History Museum in Greenville SC, where it will be included in my exhibition, Salley Mavor: Social Fabric. On display will be a variety of pieces I’ve made over the past 20 years that interpret the theme of social connectivity. The works explore cultural diversity, migration, fashion, the natural world, and a range of social narratives, from the everyday to topical subjects. The work will be at the museum for a nice long stretch, from April 3 – Sept. 5, 2021.

Many people have asked if the original is for sale. No, it isn’t, as I will be holding onto it, so that it can be displayed in public exhibitions. The next best thing (and affordable, too) is to get the poster in my Etsy shop.

Detail images from Birds of Beebe Woods are printed as note cards, too. They’re also available in my Etsy Shop.

Before I sewed everything onto the background, my husband Rob took a photo of the felt covered wire border suspended in front of the woods around our house. Then my sister, Anne used her graphic design skills to disappear the fishing line and make an announcement for the 2012 Intimate Woods exhibit at Highfield Hall in Falmouth.

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.

8 card set of Birds of Beebe Woods

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

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MY BED – Home: Part 4

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PART 4 – Elephant Lamp and Goldfish Lampshade: Today’s post shows how I made the elephant lamp and goldfish lampshade in the child’s bedroom at the end of my picture book, My Bed.
Part 1 gives an overview of the page.
Part 2 focuses on the outside architectural details of the cut-away house.
Part 3 takes a peek inside at the furniture and the sleeping child.
Future parts will be about all of the other animal icons represented in the scene.

Signed copies of My Bed are available in my shop here. Watch this 8-minute documentary about making the artwork for the book.

My original idea for this illustration was to show a universal child sleeping in bed, surrounded by stuffed toys that looked like the animal icons featured throughout the book. I soon realized that the bed and floor around it wouldn’t accommodate all of the animals, so I came up with other ways spread them around the room.

The sturdy elephant turned into a lamp base and the goldfish ended up swimming around a sea blue lampshade. The goldfish icon first appears on the text panel in the Japanese spread in the book.

To make the lampshade, I appliqued an embroidered felt goldfish head and tail onto a piece of blue felt.

I added a felt back piece and edged the front and back with wire on the top and bottom. That way, it would stick out and stay curved like a real shade.

For the lamp base, I shrunk the elephant down to about 1/2 the size of the spot illustration on the text panel on the Indian page of the book.

To make the armature, I bent a pipe cleaner and threaded one end through a wooden bead. The bead would become the head and the pipe cleaner extension would form the trunk.

Then I wrapped the pipe cleaner trunk with embroidery floss, covering the fuzzies like the dolls’ arms and legs are made in my how-to book Felt Wee Folk.

I sewed pieces of felt inside the body to fill in the void and give it bulk.

I then covered the bead head and body with pieces of felt. It’s been a few years, so I can’t remember exactly how this part was done, but I remember that it was rather fussy. I probably used 2 separate pieces for the front and back of the body and the head.

You can see the difference in scale between the 2 elephants in the photo of my work table below. They’re like the mother and baby elephant in my first children’s book, The Way Home.

Replicating the blanket at 1/2 size was also fussy, but at least it was flat!

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a full size version of this lamp, with the elephant made out of clay or wood and a painted goldfish swimming around the shade?

Stay tuned for more posts about the other animals in this 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

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