Category Archives: Bed Book in Progress

MY BED: night sky – part 4

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This is the 4th and final part in the series about making the night sky illustration for my new picture book, My Bed. In this spread, all of the children are tucked in bed, hovering among the stars in the night sky. Today, I will show how I made the miniature versions of the children and beds from Russia and North America.

But first, I have some GOOD NEWS on the exhibition front! A new museum has just confirmed that they will be hosting the Bedtime Stitches touring exhibition in 2024. The Albany Institute of History and Art in Albany, NY will show Bedtime Stitches, as well as Social Fabric, a collection of other pieces I’ve made over the past 20 years. This all came about because a longtime fan contacted the museum in her home town of Albany about showing my work. Thank you Janny! This proves that the combination of your enthusiasm, along with local connections can get results.

Bedtime Stitches is currently at the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in Mt. Vernon, IL through May 30th, 2021. To see the tour schedule, please visit the Exhibitions Page.

Signed copies of My Bed can be ordered in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

For the night sky scene, I made a smaller version of the traditional “stove bed” ” like the one in the Russian scene. Besides its use for domestic heating, people slept on top of the masonry to keep warm.

To start, I cut felt in the shape of the stove and embroidered the details. The fire box door is appliqued black felt, with a metal hook for the handle and black seed beads for the hinges. I edged the stove and bed platform pieces with blanket stitches and sewed them together. To keep it from being too floppy, I stitched wire all around the outside edges. You can’t see the wire because it’s wrapped with thread.

I made a mini version of the sleeping girl, braids and all.

Then, I created a snug place for the girl to lie down. The back wall and curtain are made of felt and the scalloped edge along the top is thread wrapped wire. Then, I added a wire curl of smoke coming out of the chimney top. The last touch was a stack of seed beads “logs” inside the wood box.

I also replicated in miniature the bed and child from the North American scene. For comparison, you can see how I made the full size illustration here.

i simplified the quilt pattern into a grid of squares made with 4 or 5 horizontal or vertical stitches.

As with the other sleeping dolls, I only had to make the top portion of the child’s body.

The bed posts are tube beads topped off with round beads. I glued wire inside the beads to hold them together. The head and foot boards are made of felt.

Here she is, ready to join the other children!

I hope that you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes at how I made some of the tiniest beds in MY BED. The other posts in the night sky series are:
Part 1 – North Africa and Holland
Part 2 – Scandinavia and Japan
Part 3 – India, South America and Afghanistan

To keep up with new posts, subscribe to this blog (top right column on the home page). Your contact info will not be shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

MY BED: night sky – part 3

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This is part 3 in the series about making the night sky illustration for my new picture book, My Bed. In this spread, all of the children are tucked in bed, hovering among the stars in the night sky. Today, I will show how I made the miniature versions of the beds from India, South America and Afghanistan.

Update: Signed copies of My Bed can be ordered in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

Rebecca Bond’s words say, “Can you see me in my bed? I fit so nicely, toe to head.” The open-ended nature of these 2 simple sentences is a picture book illustrator’s dream. They give the cozy feeling of a child in their bed, without any annoying descriptions. There’s just enough information to use as a jumping off point. Generally, with picture books, the words set up the trajectory of a story and the illustrator’s job is to provide the visual details. I can’t remember exactly how I came up with the idea of having all the beds float in space above a silhouetted night skyline. It just seemed like a good way to bring together all of the children from around the world, as well as make a fun eye spy game.

The Bedtime Stitches touring exhibition of the original artwork for the book is currently at the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in Mt. Vernon, IL. The exhibition will be there until May 2, 2021. To see the tour schedule, please visit the Exhibitions Page.

To make miniature versions of the beds featured throughout the book, I had to simplify the designs quite a bit. In the case of the child in India, who’s bed is partially seen through an open window in the illustration below, I reduced the scale of the bed and stylized the mosquito net.

I embroidered a geometric pattern on felt for the bed covering…

and fashioned the mosquito net canopy on felt, with wire and embroidery. What would I do without the blanket stitch?

The children sleeping in hammocks in the S. American scene are about 3 1/2 inches from head to toe.

For the mini version, I shrunk the girl down to about 1 1/4 inches tall.

I made a thatched roof for her little hammock to hang underneath. Luckily, I had some straw silk from Silk Road Fibers on hand.

It was a lot easier to replicate the child sleeping on a floor mattress from the Afghanistan scene.

The printed floral pattern was too large in scale for the mini quilt, so I reproduced the flowers and leaves with simple embroidery stitches on a piece of felt.

Here she is, already sleep.

The whole time I was making the children and their beds in miniature form, I thought back to re-imagining the full size outfits depicted in my Self Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion. By the way, a note card of this detail from the piece is available in my shop.

detail from Self Portrait : A Personal History of Fashion 2007

I hope that you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes at how I made some of the tiniest beds in MY BED. Please stay tuned for Part 4, which will feature more beds in the night sky scene. Previous posts in this series include Part 1 and Part 2.

To keep up with new posts, subscribe to this blog (top right column on the home page). Your contact info will not be shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

MY BED: night sky – part 2

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This is part 2 in the series about making the night sky illustration for my new picture book, My Bed. It’s like a finale at the end, with all of the children and their beds hovering above the nighttime skyline. Today, I will give a behind the scenes peek at how I made the miniature versions of the Scandinavian children sleeping in their cubby style bunk bed and the Japanese child on his futon. Part 1 covered the mini children from N. Africa and Holland.

Update: Signed copies of My Bed can be ordered in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

The tiny beds floating in the night sky represent different children, beds and regions of the world that are featured individually throughout the book. To make the mini Scandinavian bunk bed, I simplified and shrunk down the bed frame to the point where it wouldn’t look too unwieldy next to the other beds. You can read about making the full size artwork (below) for the Scandinavian scene here.

Scandinavian scene in MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep Around the World

I painted their faces on really tiny (3/8″) wooden beads and added embroidery floss hair. I think these are some of the smallest braids I’ve ever made. The doll wigs in my how-to book Felt Wee Folk – New Adventures are larger and more manageable than this.

Scale-wise the figures were too big for the bed, but I was determined to fit them in their cubbies nonetheless. The absence of legs helped a lot.

I cut sections of the bed frame out of wool felt and pieced them together on top of a background layer. As usual, everything was edged with blanket stitching. To create depth in the frame, I stacked layers of felt.

I stitched wire around the outside edge to smooth out the bumps and give it a crisp, architectural look.

After making eiderdown quilts and polka-dot curtains, I put the children to bed.

To finish it off, I made a mini ladder with wire and covered it with embroidery floss.

Duplicating the Japanese futon in miniature was easy compared to the bunk bed. To see how I made the full size artwork (below) for the Japanese scene, click here.

I made the the top half of the child’s body and then a futon mattress and pillow for him to sleep on.

Because the scale was all off, I couldn’t use the same blue fabric to make the quilt, so I embroidered a reduced version of the pattern on felt.

I hope that you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes at how I made some of the tiniest beds in MY BED. Please stay tuned for more posts about different beds in the night sky scene. See Part 1 here.

To keep up with new posts, subscribe to this blog (top right column on the home page). Your contact info will not be shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

My Bed: night sky- part 1

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This is the first in a series of posts that will show how I made the night sky illustration for my new picture book, My Bed. The spread appears near the end of the story, with all of the children from around the world sleeping in their beds, floating in a starry sky above a silhouetted town. By the time I made this scene, I was about 2 years into the project and had gotten used to taking photos of almost every little step along the way. So, there’s a lot of material to share, which is divided into several parts that I’ll write about over the next few weeks. You can see a list of posts about making the other illustrations for the book on this page.

Update: Signed copies of My Bed can be ordered in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

The Bedtime Stitches touring exhibition is currently at the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in Mt. Vernon, IL. This is an opportunity for those of you in the middle of the country to see the original bas-relief embroidered artwork for MY BED. The exhibition will be there until May 2, 2021. To see the tour schedule, please visit the Exhibitions Page.

Bedtime Stitches exhibit at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mt. Vernon, IL

Thank you to those of you who’ve reached out to museums in your area to tell them about the exhibit. This strategy has resulted in several bookings! In fact, I’m in the process of working out the details with a curator who heard about my show from a fan who’s eager to see my artwork in person. As soon as the dates are confirmed, this museum will be added to the tour schedule.

Way back in the beginning, I sketched out the pages of the book. For the finished illustration, I rearranged the beds at bit, keeping in mind not to loose any children in the gutter. That’s where the pages are bound together in the center, which is marked with a vertical line on the drawing.

First, I made houses and trees out of black felt for the silhouetted landscape. I found some shiny golden fabric in my stash and sewed it behind the cutout openings for the windows and doorways. To help define the buildings and trees, I stitched wire around the outside edges.

Then, I started making miniature versions of the characters and beds pictured throughout the book. Since they are so tiny, I simplified the designs to include important and recognizable features. This one represents the child sleeping on the roof in the North African scene.

To make these reduced scale versions, I had to substitute smaller parts such as red seed beads for the roof tiles.

The girl’s pink nightie is made out of the same old handkerchief that I used to make the larger version in the North African scene. As you can see, the sleeves are not fabric, but embroidery floss wrapped around her wire arms.

I made the head and foot boards of another bed with wire and tube beads.

This is a different interpretation of the child who appears several times in the book – on the title page and in the scene that shows a house full of animal icons. The orange pajamas and star covered quilt are the giveaway.

For the boy in the scene set in Holland, I didn’t even try to duplicate the houseboat in such small scale, but instead made a boat bed for him to sleep in.

I hope that you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes at how I made some of the tiniest beds in MY BED. Please stay tuned for more posts about different beds in the night sky scene.

To keep up with new posts, subscribe to this blog (top right column on the home page). Your contact info will not be shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Making My Bed video

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My husband Rob and I are pleased to announce the release of our new 8 minute documentary about making the artwork for my picture book, MY BED. It’s an inside view into my process and motivations, showing in words, video, and photos how I approached the project from start to finish. I hope that you enjoy the film! Please feel free to share it with your family and friends.

8 minute documentary about how Salley Mavor made the artwork for her picture book, MY BED.

We had planned to produce the film earlier, to coincide with the publication of the book in September. But, there were so many other pressing things to do, such as prepare for the Bedtime Stitches touring exhibition, which included building frames for the artwork. Now that the exhibition is traveling (It’s going to the  Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in Mt. Vernon, IL Feb. 28 – May 2, 2021) we could concentrate on the film.

Thank goodness for the quiet of winter! I don’t know how I would survive without the pace of the external world slowing down for a few months every year. Over the past several weeks, we focused our attention on writing and recording the script and sorting through a gazillion photos and videos. Our good friend Bonnie Simon, who produces Maestro Classics: Stories in Music kindly agreed to help edit the script and be the narrator.

We had about 3 years of material to review. I’ve documented the process in photos from the beginning and Rob took videos during the last year or so. I constantly pestered him to stop what he was doing and come take a video of me working on different stages of the process. He had to set up lights and other equipment, so it was no simple task. Even though it was a nuisance, he filmed some good shots that added a lot to the movie. The following photos appear in the movie at different parts of the storytelling.

To make the animated title sequence, we set up a camera facing down at a table top. We were a stop-motion animation team – I moved the pieces of thread little by little, while Rob snapped the camera.

We also filmed an arrangement of found objects from my collection. It was a simple slide, not stop-motion animation this time. That would be whole other movie!

Rob did a marvelous job editing the movie on his computer. He started with the speaking parts to set the timing and then added photos and videos that corresponded with the narration. After he had completed a draft of visuals and sound, we sent it to Matthias Bossi at Stellwagen Symphonette for the musical underscore. They wrote the music and sound effects for our film Liberty and Justice and we were thrilled to work with them again.

Rob and I are excited to share the fruits of our labor with you! The Making My Bed video can be watched and shared on YouTube here.
Autographed copies of the book, MY BED are available in my shop here.

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

Bed book peek: title page

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For the past 3 years, I’ve shared the process of making the illustrations for my new picture book My Bed. Even though we all stayed home, it feels as if we’ve been on an international journey together, into the homes of children around the world. To date, I’ve written 45 posts about different aspects of how I made the book, including double page spreads and animal spot illustrations. Every time I write a post in this series, I think that we must being nearing the end. Then I discover more digital images in forgotten folders. So, it looks like there’s enough material to keep the Bed Book Peeks gong for for a bit longer. To see a complete list of posts in the series, please go to this page.

Update: Signed copies of My Bed can be ordered in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

Today’s post is about the title page. Unlike the lush scenes inside the book, which totally fill up a page and a half, this artwork was made to float on a white background. I thought of it as a minimal stage set, with a few props and a window suspended in space. That way, the book designer had the flexibility to adjust the positioning of the pieces to accommodate the type layout. I also requested an open area on the page for drawing a picture and signing the book.

BED: I built the bed’s head and foot boards out of beads and wire. To hide the shiny wire and make it blend in with the bead color, I covered it with embroidery floss. After making the basic frame, I sewed the bead rungs inside the wire.

I made a mattress out of felt, sewed the boards to the head and foot of the bed and added bead legs. The bed is foreshortened to give the illusion that the foot board is standing upright.

The foreshortened bed is easier to see in this side view.

I made a tiny child, who I tucked in bed, with a pillow and a star covered quilt.

Window: First, I constructed a window out of felt and beads. Then, I fashioned a valance style curtain out of wire wrapped with pink embroidery floss. I filled in the the curtain loops with cross hatched embroidery floss, which was like weaving a lattice topped pie.

Rug: I chain-stitched a smiling sun on a green felt rug, to contrast with the night sky in the window and the star covered quilt .

Lamp: In keeping with the celestial theme, I made a lamp out of a star button to put atop a bedside table.

After the bed, table, window and rug were photographed for reproduction, I needed to find a way to display the them in Bedtime Stitches, the exhibition of original artwork for the book. I decided to mount the bedroom set along with a larger star, which I made for a different part of the book.

I arranged the items on the green felt in the center of the back cover illustration. You can see how I made the border in another post here. I couldn’t just leave the open areas plain, so I doodled a bunch of chain-stitched curly cues.

The touring exhibition of original artwork for MY BED, SALLEY MAVOR: Bedtime Stories will next be at the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in Mount Vernon, IL, Feb. 28 – May 5, 2021. This is an opportunity for the public to see up close the fine detail and 3-dimensional quality of my bas-relief sculptural embroideries. The show is currently booked at several museums through June 2023 with the possibility of being extended into 2024. The current tour schedule is listed on this page. Interested museums are welcome to contact me for information about hosting the exhibition.

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

Bed book peek: Dog

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Today, I’m happy to give a behind the scenes peek at how I made this dog, which is used as a spot illustration in my new picture book, MY BED. The story about children’s sleeping places in different cultures around the world was published in Sept. 2020. A touring exhibition of my original embroidered artwork for the book is traveling around the United States. Salley Mavor: Bedtime Stitches will next be shown at the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, in Mt. Vernon, IL from Feb. 28 to May 5, 2021. The tour schedule is listed here.

Update: Signed copies of My Bed can be ordered in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

The dog joins all of the other animal icons on the book’s endpapers. If you’d like to see posts about making the other animal icons for the book, please follow the links below: Rooster, Camel, Parrot, Elephant, Goldfish, Cat, Duck, Sheep, Rabbit, Cow, Crocodile, Giraffe.

Forming the dog: After drawing a simple dog shape, I bent a pipe cleaner to match the outline. Then I wrapped the legs and tail with embroidery floss, using the same technique that I teach in my how-to book of doll projects, Felt Wee Folk.

Backing: I sewed a felt scrap to the back of the pipe cleaner, cutting the felt to fit as I stitched around the whole body.

Padding: I padded the inside of the body by layering and sewing small scraps of felt inside the pipe cleaner edge. It didn’t matter what color the backing and padding was since it’ll be hidden inside.

Body front: At this point, I must have been so engrossed in adding the top layer of felt that I forgot to take photos until the whole body was covered. So, I’ll try to explain what I did. I cut out a piece of felt that was about 3/8″ bigger than the dog shape. Then, I folded the felt over the pipe cleaner edge and stitched it to the backing. To make it nice and tight, I went around several times, until the head and body where clearly defined. I cut and stitched the felt closely around the legs and tail to make them fit.

Ears, nose, eyes: I stitched a mouth with embroidery floss and sewed on seed beads for an eye and nose. For the ear, I cut out a separate piece of felt, edged it with blanket stitches and sewed it to the head. I chain-stitched a collar and sewed on a bead for a dog tag.

Fur: The dog’s body looked rather plain, so gave it a furry texture using mending wool. I’m glad I kept a collection of vintage cards that were found in a relative’s dresser drawers. They’re from the days when people actually darned moth holes.

Tail: To make the tail look more tail-like, I covered the wrapped pipe cleaner with other stitches.

The dog appears on the back cover of the book. You can see a previous post about making the border here. Stay tuned for more peeks behind the scenes!

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.

Bed book peek: giraffe

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Shall we start the year with something cute to counteract the fact that everything in the world seems to be spiraling out of control? Good, now that we agree on a diversion, I will show how I made the giraffe for my new book, My Bed.

Update: Signed copies of My Bed can be ordered in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

I’d originally picked a giraffe to go with the illustration set in Africa. But, then we narrowed it down to the country of Ghana, which doesn’t have giraffes. I started researching other possible animals to go along with the scene. Fortunately, sat next to man from Ghana in a restaurant, who told me about wild life in his home country, including crocodiles. So, I switched to a crocodile instead. My ignorance about the African continent almost caused a gaffe similar to what Delta Airlines went through when they chose an image of a giraffe to represent Ghana in a tweet about the World Cup in 2014!

I was able to use the giraffe on another page, though. It appears with the other animal icons on the end-papers and as a spot illustration on the text panel in the second to last spread in the book, which isn’t set in any particular part of the world.

To start, I drew a simple sketch of a giraffe and bent a pipe cleaner to form the legs. Then I wrapped them with embroidery floss, using the same techniques I teach in my how-to book of doll projects, Felt Wee Folk.

From there, I built up the body and neck with felt and more thread wrapping.

While studying photos of giraffes. I noticed that their spots are made up of a complex combination of shapes and patterns, that fit together like paving stones on a garden path.

I used chain stitching to make the spots, which has become my favorite way of filling in areas. I sewed the spot covered piece of felt to the giraffe’s body and neck. I covered the back with a mishmash of stitches, which stretched across to hold the front piece tightly in place. There was no need to make the back look pretty. After all, art is an illusion.

To make the mane, I sewed a length of wire along the giraffe’s neck and wrapped it with thread.Then, I blanket stitched a few rows of “hair” along the wire mane.

It took several attempts to make the giraffe’s head, which had a combination of funny looking, yet endearing features. Not only do giraffes have horns and long ears, they have prominent eyes, an oddly shaped nose and a smiling mouth. That all had to be reduced to a few stitches, beads and wire.

For the tail, I sewed on a looped section of wire, which I wrapped with thread.

When I sewed on the head, it actually looked like a giraffe!

If you’d like to see posts about making the other animal icons for the book, please follow the links below:
Animals – Rooster, Camel, Parrot, Elephant, Goldfish, Cat, Duck, Sheep, Rabbit, Cow, Crocodile, Dog.

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.

Bedtime Stitches tour

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Japan

The first showing of the Bedtime Stitches touring exhibition is coming to an end, with just 3 more weeks to go (through Dec. 19) at the Cahoon Museum in Cotuit MA. So, if you’ve thought about going, but haven’t yet, please get yourself over there before it’s shipped off to Illinois! (See the tour schedule later in this post). I recommend registering ahead, as the museum has protocols in place to ensure a safe and welcoming experience for their visitors, with timed entry in 1 hour intervals and required face coverings. Click here for hours, registration and Covid safely information. There’s a free Open House on Sunday, Dec. 6th from 10:00 – 4:00.

One visitor who made the trip from 2 hours away described her experience this way, “Having not been in a museum, post office, etc. since March 13, I debated coming down, but I felt very safe in that BIG room and with the COVID19 protocols and limited # of people allowed in per hour.”

The Falmouth Enterprise

Reviews of the exhibition have a similar theme, all pointing out the comforting and uplifting effect the artwork has on people. The headline of the Falmouth Enterprise article read, “Bedtime Stitches Provides Cozy Respite From Tumultuous Year”. And Artscope Magazine‘s review starts off saying, “The genius of Salley Mavor’s meticulously realized imaginative worlds is just what we need right now.”

Russia

Some people have gone to the museum more than once, returning 2 or 3 times with family and friends. Visitors have left comments like these – “What beautiful sensitive artwork to soothe the soul.” and “It’s so beautiful, with such warm qualities, something we need so badly now.” Hearing these kind of reactions makes me feel that all those years of stitching were worth it.

The “Bedtime Stitches” exhibition features 18 original sculptural embroideries that were used to illustrate my new picture book, My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World. The book is available wherever books are sold. Signed copies are in my shop here.

Before I framed each scene behind glass, I added fabric borders and signed them with my initials and the year 2020. I completed them all before 2020, of course, but that’s the date when the project was completed and the collection was published in a book.

Currently, the Bedtime Stitches exhibition is booked at 7 museums through May 2023 and more could be added. I wish I could wave a magic and send it all over the country, but I’m limited by how many years I want to keep the collection in circulation, as well as reliant on the interest and financial support of museums and curators. If you want the show to travel close to where you live, please talk it up with a museum in your area. Enthusiasm from local members of the community can make a difference. That’s how the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, WA heard about the opportunity and booked the show for 2023. Museums are welcome to contact me for information about hosting the exhibit. 

The exhibition includes a series of panels showing the process of making the artwork for MY BED.

BEDTIME STITCHES
A touring exhibition of original bas-relief embroidered illustrations by Salley Mavor for her new picture book, MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World. 

Sept. 11 – Dec. 19, 2020 at the Cahoon Museum, Cotuit, MA.
Feb. 28 – April 25, 2021, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mount Vernon, IL
Sept. 14 – Dec. 31, 2021, New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, MA
Jan. 22 – May 8, 2022, Upcountry History Museum, Greenville, SC
June – September 2022, Brick Store Museum, Kennebunk, ME
Fall 2022, Historical and Cultural Center of Clay County, Moorhead, MN
Feb. 1 – Apr. 30, 2023, Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum, La Conner, WA
Additional locations will be added when they are confirmed.

Home

The Cahoon Museum has published the sweetest little booklet that makes a nice keepsake of the exhibition. The Booklets are 6″ x 9″ soft cover, full-color, 16 pages. It’s full of photos and information about the exhibition, including images of works only on view at the Cahoon. See what’s in the book here.

Animals

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

MY BED is officially launched!

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I’m happy to finally report that MY BED is officially released today, Sept. 8th! Thank you to all of you who pre-ordered signed copies of the book. Please be patient while I process 500+ orders and make a gazillion trips to the post office. I hope to get most of them out this week. Some of you may have received yours already, as I jumped the gun a bit and sent out some ahead of schedule. (Don’t tell my publisher!)
You can order signed copies in my shop here.

The book, MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World takes the viewer on an international journey, showing where children sleep in varying cultures and living environments around the world. I like to think that it will help both children and adults view the world as a good place.

In creating the illustrations for My Bed, I feel as if I’ve gotten to visit all the children in the places they live around the globe, even though I stayed home. Author Rebecca Bond wrote a poem that celebrates our differences, while also bringing us together through the universal theme of children sleeping in their safe little beds. When making the artwork for each of the featured locations, I thought about what makes each child’s bed and home unique, as well as warm and welcoming. My aim was to portray a distinct sense of place for each culture, using architecture, furnishings, and landscapes as guides. I researched the different regions, looking at photos of children and their living situations, both inside and out, now and in the past.

I started working on the illustrations over 4 years ago, but after the 2016 election I put it aside for a year and a half and delved into political satire with the Wee Folk Players and the stop-motion animated film, Liberty and Justice. Looking back, this period has been the most trans-formative, both personally and professionally. Through the twists and turns of the past few years, I’ve learned that sharing my vision, whether it be in a precious, poignant or provocative way, is important.

Liberty and Justice – stop-motion animated film

Many of you have followed along through the process of making the scenes for the book. And there’s more to come! Throughout the fall, I will be posting stories and pictures about different aspects of the illustrations. Up until now, I haven’t posted images of the whole scenes, just details and process photos. But now that the book is out, I’ll show a few. For a full list of posts about making each scene, click here.

Click here to find out how I made the scene from Afghanistan.

Click here to see posts about how I made the Dutch scene.

Click here for a peek at making the South American scene.

Click here to see how I made the Indian scene.

BEDTIME STITCHES Exhibition
And there’s more exciting news! Salley Mavor: Bedtime Stitches, the touring exhibition of original embroidered artwork for the book debuts at the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit, MA. The exhibition will be there from Sept. 11 – Dec. 19, 2020. To ensure a safe and welcoming experience when you visit, please pre-register for timed entry. Masks will also be required. For those of you who live too far away to come see the show in person, the museum will be sharing the exhibition on their website as much as possible. To see other locations for Bedtime Stitches, go here.

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