Bedtime Stitches in Pacific Northwest

Posted on February 19, 2023 by Salley Mavor

Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, WA

I am happy to announce that Bedtime Stitches, the traveling exhibition of original artwork for my picture book, MY BED, is on view at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, WA through April 30th. This is the westernmost location on the tour and I hope that many of you in the area (including BC, Canada) will make the trip to see the show. To find out where it’s going in the next couple of years, please visit the exhibitions page.

MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World is available worldwide where books are sold, including from online vendors. Autographed copies can be purchased in my Etsy Shop here.

The exhibition of embroidered bas-relief sculptures brings the viewer on an international journey, showing children in varying cultures and home environments around the world. Each intricately rendered scene captures the spirit of a different place and way of life, all the while illuminating the universal theme of children sleeping safe in their beds.

I’m especially excited to have my work at the museum because the Pacific Northwest has such an active quilt and fiber arts community. People are already flocking to see the show and telling their friends about it. Recent visitors wrote, “The pieces are even more amazing in person!” and “I found myself standing in front of each frame and ‘dreaming’. I will go back.”

In addition to the framed original artwork, visitors will see several interpretive boards that touch on different aspects of my working process, including this one about the animal icons featured throughout the book. While I worked on the animals, I took photos along the way and shared how I made each one. Click the animals to link to posts:

Rooster, Camel, Parrot, Elephant, Goldfish, Cat, Duck, Sheep,
Rabbit, Cow, Crocodile, Giraffe, Dog, Pony.

I am grateful to the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum for their enthusiastic invitation to show my work and willingness to book it years in advance! The exhibition is spread out on the 3rd floor of their beautiful Tudor-style Victorian mansion.

Bedtime Stitches is currently booked through 2024 with the possibility of being extended into 2025. Interested museums and curators are welcome to contact me (Salley at weefolkstudio.com) for information about hosting the exhibit.

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 opens in Minnesota

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Salley Mavor

Bedtime Stitches at the Cahoon Museum in 2020

In the two years since Bedtime Stitches, the touring exhibition of original bas-relief artwork for my book, MY BED debuted at the Cahoon Museum, the show has been enjoyed by thousands of visitors at five different museums in Illinois, Nebraska and parts of New England. I’m excited that even more people will have the opportunity to experience the detail and 3-dimensional quality of my work as the exhibition continues to travel to other parts of the country during the next few years. You can see the schedule here.

Here I am at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk, Maine, with a van packed full of my life’s work from last summer’s retrospective exhibition, What a Relief (which included Bedtime Stitches).

Artwork from last summer’s exhibition, “What a Relief” packed up and heading home.

Bedtime Stitches being installed at the Brick Store Museum in the summer of 2022.

I’m happy to announce that the next location of Bedtime Stitches will be the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County in Moorhead, Minnesota from Oct. 15 through Jan. 1, 2023. I’m envisioning carloads of friends making the trip north from Minneapolis and south from Winnipeg, across the Canadian border, to visit the show!

Opening Event – Oct. 15, 1-5 PM. Dr. Sandra Gordon will give a presentation about my life-long passion with 3-D embroidery at 1:00 PM. I am grateful to Sandra for suggesting that the museum host the exhibition. She is active in the Embroiderer’s Guild of America and has written 2 articles about my work for their publication, Needlearts.

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 collection of artwork brings the viewer on an international journey, showing children in varying cultures and home environments around the world. Each intricately rendered scene captures the spirit of a different place and way of life, all the while illuminating the universal theme of children sleeping safe in their beds.

After its time in Minnesota, the exhibition will be heading further west, to the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum in LaConner, WA, Feb. 1 – April 30, 2023. See the tour schedule through 2024 here.

Will Bedtime Stitches continue to tour after 2024?
I’m open to having the exhibition travel for a little longer, as long as museums are interested in hosting it. I would love to keep the series together for as long as possible and create more opportunities to view the original embroidered pieces in person, which is a completely different experience than seeing them on a screen or on the printed pages of a book.

I constantly hear from people who want to see my original work in their home territory, from Texas to Australia. I wish I had the power to just point a magic wand and send my pieces all over the world. But the reality is much more complicated. You see, there are all kinds of things that need to happen to make an exhibition possible, starting with an invitation from a museum. At this point, I’m more engrossed in making-mode than promo-mode and am no longer actively searching out locations. But, I’m very willing to answer inquiries directly from museums and curators.

Actually, the most effective approach has been for fans to reach out to their local museums and tell them about the opportunity to show my work. That’s how several bookings came about, including the one in Minnesota. Interested museums can contact me for details about the exhibition at salley@weefolkstudio.com.

Bedtime Stitches opens in Lincoln, NE and other news

Posted on January 31, 2022 by Salley Mavor

First off, I’d like to welcome the influx of new subscribers, who’ve recently discovered my work through The Quilt Show. I hope that you enjoy exploring my needle and thread universe that you don’t get too lost in the archives!
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Today’s post includes an exhibition announcement with a virtual gallery tour, a zoom interview hosted by Niisha HandCrafted from Dubai, UAE and a preview of the fall landscape in my 4 seasons series.

Southeastern New England took the brunt of last weekend’s blizzard, but miraculously we didn’t lose power. Sunday was both a gross and fine motor skills kind of day, with shoveling outside and stitching inside in front of the wood-stove. Gotta have a balance of physical exertion and fiddly handwork or weird things start to happen!

I’m working on the fall landscape (autumn for some of you) in my 4 seasons series. As you can see, this scene will have a moss-covered habitat for the wee folk that is surrounded by chain-stitched vegetation. There’s still a lot more to do, but if I can complete it by spring, this yet-to-be-named piece will join Mossy Glen and Frosty Morning in my retrospective show at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk, ME this summer (June 3 – Sept. 11, 2022).

Bedtime Stitches Touring Exhibition
The International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska is hosting Bedtime Stitches through April 9, 2022. Even if you live too far away and can’t see the show in person, you can have a virtual gallery tour on their web page here .

The Bedtime Stitches exhibition is a unique opportunity for the public to see the detail and 3-dimensional quality of my actual hand-stitched artwork, which was photographed and printed in the book, MY BED: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World.

The collection of artwork takes the viewer on an international journey, showing where children sleep in varying cultures and living environments around the world. Along with the framed embroidered pieces, interpretive boards give a background peek at my process. See where the show is going for the next few years on the exhibitions page.

View the virtual gallery tour here.

Bedtime Stitches at the International Quilt Museum

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.

Visitors to the exhibition, as well as those of you at home with a copy of My Bed, can hunt for details in the artwork using the downloadable sheet below.

my_bed_hunt_printable Download

And finally, I want to share a zoom interview I did with Niisha HandCrafted from Dubai, UAE, which can be seen on her Facebook page. If you’re interested in learning about my artwork, where it came from and why I do it, this interview is for you. Prompted by Niisha’s insightful questions, I blab on for over an hour about all kinds of things – how I got started and grew as an artist, what I think about “slow stitching”, as well as offer advice for people who want to build a creative life of their own.

MY BED – Home: Part 1

Posted on November 14, 2021 by Salley Mavor

PART 1 – Overview: For the past few years, I’ve shared the process of making the 3-dimensional embroidered illustrations for my newest picture book, MY BED. The book has been out for a year and the Bedtime Stitches touring exhibition of the original artwork is well underway. So, I’d like to pick up where I left off last year and continue to show what goes into doing this kind of work. Posts I’ve written in the Bed Book Peek series so far are listed here.

The Bedtime Stitches touring exhibition is at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA through Dec. 31, 2021 and will be at the International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, NE Jan. 25 – April 10, 2022. See the the full schedule here. Visitors often ask, “How did she make all of this in one year?”. It’s confusing because all of the pieces are consistently embroidered with the date 2020 on the border. Even though I worked on it over a 3 year period, the project was completed when it was published as a book in 2020.

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.

HOME – Near the end of the story, the illustration shows a child in bed, when it’s almost time to go to sleep. All of the animal icons from the different places featured throughout the book are gathered together in a snug little bedroom. I felt it was important to depict a universal child, who wasn’t clearly identifiable by gender or race, whom any child being read to could identify with. I also wanted the house to convey a warm and playful sense of “home” that could be imagined anywhere.

You can find out more about the Animal Icon spot illustrations in these previous posts – Rooster, Camel, Parrot, Elephant, Goldfish, Cat, Duck, Sheep, Rabbit, Cow, Crocodile, Giraffe, Dog, Pony.

To begin, I enlarged the thumb nail sketch to full scale and used it as a template. The drawing provided a general layout of the house and tree, but once I started making the animals, they took over and pretty much determined what the interior arrangement would be.

I worked on one double-page spread at a time. The background and parts accumulated on an old ironing board that served as an extra working surface. When I needed to press a piece of felt, the iron was right there.

Rob set up a camera and lights on top of the table, so we could make a little animated film before I sewed all of the parts together.

This is what it looks like when you compress 6 weeks into 9 seconds.

There’s is so much to show about making this scene that I’m going to write several posts focusing on different parts, including the animals, the child and architectural details. Stay tuned for more!

Bedtime Stitches on view at the New England Quilt Museum

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Salley Mavor

I’m happy to announce that the touring exhibition, BEDTIME STITCHES, is on view through Dec. 31, 2021 at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA. This is an opportunity for people in southern New England to experience the detail and 3-dimensional quality of the original artwork for my book, My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World .

Rob and I recently drove up to Lowell to take photos and videos of the show to share with you. In addition to snapping still photos, Rob filmed some impromptu conversations in the gallery, which are included later in this post.

My bas-relief embroidered book illustrations have 2 lives. The easiest and most accessible way to enjoy them is by looking at the reproductions on the printed pages of the book, My Bed. Another way to experience the artwork is to go to an exhibition of the originals, where the scenes are presented behind glass in shadow-box frames hung on the wall. Either way, you can get lost in the stitched miniature worlds full of characters, props and scenery.

Personally signed copies of My Bed are available in my shop here. Watch this 8 minute documentary about how I created the illustrations for the book.

The BEDTIME STITCHES exhibition has been traveling for the past year and is booked at museums around the country through 2024 (see schedule below). I’m open to extending the tour, so if you’d like to see the exhibition come closer to where you live, please reach out to museums in your area and tell them about the opportunity to show my artwork. Interested museums are welcome to contact me (Salley at weefolkstudio.com) for information about hosting the exhibition.

BEDTIME STITCHES Tour Schedule

Sept. 14 – Dec. 31, 2021, New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, MA
Jan 25 – April 10, 2022, International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, NE
June 3 – Sept. 11, 2022, Brick Store Museum, Kennebunk, ME, (Bedtime Stitches will be included in the retrospective exhibition, What a Relief: The Art of Salley Mavor)
Oct. 15 – Dec. 31, 2022, Historical and Cultural Center of Clay County, Moorhead, MN
Feb. 1 – Apr. 30, 2023, Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum, La Conner, WA
Fall 2023, Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT. (Bedtime Stitches and Social Fabric will be displayed together)
Feb. – May 2024, Upcountry History Museum, Greenville, SC
July — Dec. 2024, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY. (Bedtime Stitches and Social Fabric will be displayed together)

Pam Weeks – New England Quilt Museum’s curator

Pam Weeks, the museum’s curator greeted us when we got there. She did a beautiful job hanging my artwork in a cozy corner gallery, where visitors can spend time viewing the pieces up close.

A series of information panels describe different aspects of my working process, including making sketches, stitching and using wire and found objects.

While we were there, we had the good fortune to meet 2 very interesting women – artist Laura Petrovich-Cheney, who’s remarkable Wood Quilts are also on display and Janet Elwin, who helped found the New England Quilt Museum in 1987. Here we are conversing at the museum.

Here I am signing a copy of My Bed for Laura Petrovich-Cheney.

BEDTIME STITCHES will be on view at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA through Dec. 31, 2021. The next stop on the tour is the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska (Jan 25 – April 10, 2022).

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.