Summertime: Part 8 – stitching flora

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In Part 8 of the series about Summertime, I share photos and videos documenting the process of stitching flora. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems & branches, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), Part 5 – Baltimore oriole (head and feet), Part 6 – rose vine, and Part 7 – raspberry plants.

Summertime is the summer scene in a series of four seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world. Posters, note cards, prints, bookmarks, and jigsaw puzzles of Summertime and the other scenes in the series (Frosty Morning, Mossy Glen and Harvest Time) are available in my Etsy Shop.

See the Four Seasons Series and dozens of other works in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor at the New England Quilt Museum, Sept. 9 – Dec. 31, 2025.The show includes recent work, as well as rarely seen early pieces on loan from private collections.

Towards the end of the project, after months of constructing most of the 3-dimensional parts of the scene, I was ready to zero in and add embroidered leaves and flowers where they were needed. In the following video, you can see how I spread out on different work tables in my studio. Every horizontal surface was full of materials and tools, as well as the bits and pieces I’d finished making.

To do the stitching, I require very few things – a piece of felt, a needle, thread, and a thimble. And good lighting, of course. And closeup glasses. No hoop, no cumbersome magnifying equipment and no fancy needles or scissors.

It was almost impossible to draw markings on this fuzzy wool felt, even with chalk. So, I mostly worked freehand and removed the stitched red guide lines later in the process. I used DMC cotton flower thread, which is thicker and bolder than embroidery floss. In this video, watch how I chain-stitched leaves and added Parawire stems on top.

Chain-stitching these leaf shapes was as soothing as filling in a coloring book.

I added patches of black-eyed susans to open areas of blue sky below the raspberries and above the stone wall (coming in part 9).

In other open areas, I chain-stitched blades of grass, dotted with little French knot flowers.

I was nearing the end of the project, which meant that it was time to tackle the border. I got out my stash of upholstery fabric and tried out different color combinations. Red and gold popped out at me; they contrasted with the blue sky and brought out the color of the raspberries. I padded the wooden stretchers with cotton quilt batting and sewed the upholstery fabric around the frame, which created a shallow box to fill with all of the parts.

Stay tuned for Part 9, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of stitching moss and the sky, and building the stone wall in Summertime.

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.

Summertime: Part 6 – rose vine

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In Part 6 of the series about Summertime, I share photos and videos that document the process of making the rose vine. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems & branches, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), and Part 5 – Baltimore oriole (head and feet). Part 7 – raspberry plants, and Part 8 – stitching flora.

See the Four Seasons Series and dozens of other works in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor at the New England Quilt Museum, Sept. 9 – Dec. 31, 2025. The show includes recent work, as well as rarely seen early pieces on loan from private collections.

ROSES
I learned how to make basic felt roses like these years ago from Mimi Kirchner’s blog. Mimi’s tutorial is available here. I love how deceptively simple the process is, starting with a circle of felt and folding it like origami to make a rose shape. Watch the following video to see how I finished off the raw felt edges with blanket stitching and folded the circle to make a rose.

Felt Rose

LEAVES
To cut out the sharp-toothed edge around the rose leaves, I used pinking shears. The following video shows how I stitched wire around the outside of a felt leaf and embroidered its stem and veins.

Felt Rose Leaf

I twisted wire to make a central vine and added the roses, leaves, thorns, and curly tendrils. Besides felt and embroidery floss, the most common material in my artwork is wire. Felt alone is too floppy and needs structural supports. I used Parawire in a range of gauges, from 24 to 32, to build up the thickness and strength I wanted.

The last step was disguising the shiny metallic wire with embroidery floss. Part 3 in this series includes videos of wrapping wire stems and branches on other foliage in the Summertime piece. I wound 1 or 2 strands of floss around and around the stems until the surface was evenly covered. It was a bit tricky to make the thorns look sharp!

Stay tuned for Part 7, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of making the raspberry plants in Summertime. 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.

Summertime: Part 5 – Baltimore Oriole (head and feet)

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In this Part 5 of the series about Summertime, I share photos, videos and commentary that document the process of making the Baltimore Oriole’s head and feet. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 3 – leaves, stems & branches, and Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body), Part 6 – rose vine , Part 7 – raspberry plants, and Part 8 – stitching flora.

See the Four Seasons Series and dozens of other works in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor at the New England Quilt Museum, Sept. 9 – Dec. 31, 2025. The show includes recent work, as well as rarely seen early pieces on loan from private collections.

I wouldn’t call myself an avid bird watcher, but I do appreciate the subtle differences that make each species unique. For this piece, the trick was to capture the bird’s distinguishing features without being too scientific. To understand the nuances of an Oriole, I studied photos and made sketches, paying particular attention to the position, size and angle of its head, eyes and beak.

BEAK
I must have been so focused on making the bird’s hood and eye (it’s a glass bead) that I forgot to take photos of that part. So, let’s skip ahead to the beak. To make it pointy, I formed a wire extension and wrapped it with embroidery floss.

I articulated the shape of the beak with floss, stitching over and around, until it had a smooth and seamless appearance.

Watch this video to see how I stitched the beak. It even shows what the back looks like!

After the beak was finished, I embroidered black feathers with fly stitches on the neck and throat area.

I sewed the wing and tail (see Part 4) in place and got to work on making the Oriole’s feet.

FEET
I shaped the bird’s feet and legs with wire, twisting it around to form 4 toes – 1 short and 3 long. Then, I wrapped the wire with embroidery floss, winding the thread up and down until no shiny wire was exposed and the feet were the right thickness.

Watch this video to see how I constructed the legs and feet and attached them to the bird’s body.

Stay tuned for Part 6, where I’ll share photos and videos documenting the process of making the rose vine. If you want to receive email notices when I publish new posts, please subscribe to this blog using the form below.

Harvest Time – Part 2 (turkey tail mushroom)

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Salley Mavor

In Part 2 in the series about making Harvest Time, I share photos, commentary and a stitch-minute video about creating the turkey tail mushroom overhanging the doorway in the stump. In the coming weeks and months, I will post more stories that focus on different aspects of the process of making the fall scene, including the toad stool mushroom, wee folk figures, tunnels, roots, stones and foliage of all kinds.
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom
Part 6 shows the process of making the underground

Harvest Time is the fall scene in a series of seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world, both real and imagined. Harvest Time and the other scenes I’ve completed and written about, Summertime, Frosty Morning and Mossy Glen, are available as note cards and jigsaw puzzles in my shop here.

Harvest Time Puzzles are available in my Etsy shop.

Turkey tail mushrooms or shelf fungi are found all over the world. They usually grow on dead hardwood stumps and downed hardwood trunks or branches.

I love how Glen Carliss used shelf fungi for the roofs in “Glendell Towers”, which he made for The Fairy Houses of Highfield Hall, an outdoor exhibition that I curated in 2015. Glen told me that he’d been eyeing the mushrooms growing on trees along his road for years, imaging what to do with them.

I didn’t use actual mushrooms in Harvest Time, but I was inspired by their fanciful appearance. My photo search came up with multiple color combinations, from earthy hues to shades as garish as 1960’s fashion. I chose a more subdued mixture of fall colors for the mushroom roof.

To make the striped concentric pattern, I chain stitched rows and rows of different shades of green and orange DMC cotton flower thread to a piece of felt. It took two tries to get the shape and colors the way I wanted it.

In this Stitch Minute video, I demonstrate chain stitching the stripes and adding wire.

After we filmed it, I wasn’t happy with the overall shape and color combo, so I started over and made a new one that was more curvy and included orange and yellow.

I stitched wire around the outside edge and covered it with white embroidery floss.

Then I made a smaller mushroom and a really little one that looked like a pompom on top of a hat. It’s been a year since I started working on this piece, so my memory is a bit foggy. I can only guess at how I formed the layers into a roof shape and attached it to the driftwood. I do remember that the mushroom wasn’t very cooperative and I had to torture it into shape. Most likely, I glued felt to the wood and then sewed the mushroom to the felt.

During the process, I constantly measured the depth of the trunk to make sure that it would fit behind the glass when the finished piece was framed. After the mushroom roof was added, there was just enough clearance!

My use of found objects is mostly limited to individual items that are sewn in place and incorporated into embroidered scenes. This trunk was different because it was made up of several driftwood parts that created a fairly large mass that stuck out from the background. Its depth and breadth would determine how I created everything else in the landscape.

Now that the trunk was finished, I could start building the other parts of the scene, including the ground at its base.

Part 3 will show the process of making the felt and stitched foliage growing on the ground at the foot of the tree trunk.

Summertime: Part 3 – leaves, stems, and branches

Posted on January 9, 2025 by Salley Mavor

As promised, I’m picking up where we left off last year and continuing the series about Summertime, the fourth of my seasonal landscapes. In the coming months, I’ll share photos, videos and commentary about different aspects of the project, from raspberries to wee folk inhabitants to a life size Baltimore Oriole. I went overboard documenting the process, so there’s a ton of material to show. So far, I’ve written an overview of the piece, Part 1 – Tree Trunks, and Part 2 – Tree Houses, Part 4 – Baltimore Oriole (body) , Part 5 – Baltimore Oriole (head and feet), Part 6 – rose vine , Part 7 – raspberry plants, and Part 8 – stitching flora..

See the Four Seasons Series and dozens of other works in my exhibition, To Every Season: Works by Salley Mavor at the New England Quilt Museum, Sept. 9 – Dec. 31, 2025.

Enchanting Threads: The Art of Salley Mavor at the Albany Institute of History and Art

LEAVES
Some of the foliage in this piece are realistic interpretations, like the leaves on the rose vine and raspberry plants (which will be covered in future posts), but others are pure fantasy. I wanted the scene to look believable, without being completely true to life. It’s not biological illustration; I was more interested in creating a unique ecosystem where little people could live alongside birds and berries.

I made the leaves with 3 basic materials – wool felt, wire, and embroidery floss. The following Stitch Minute video demonstrates how to make a simple leaf, edged in wire.

Stitch Minute – leaf

STEMS
Wire is literally the backbone of my work. I use it as a structural framework to keep floppy materials (like felt) firm enough to exist in space, above the background fabric. In this piece, I used copper wire made by Parawire to edge the leaves and form their stems.

The trick is to cover all of the shiny metal with floss. It takes many passes around the wire to make a smooth surface.

This video shows how I wrapped the wire stems on the central tree in the Summertime scene.

For me, making curvy stems and bending them around is like doodling with wire. I’m never sure how a vine is going to grow and climb. This purple bush was calling out for something extra, so I made a curly vine to wrap around its trunk.

In this Stitch Minute video, you can see how I wrapped the curly vine, including its little corkscrew tendril.

BRANCHES
After years of developing ways of making tree branches, my preferred method these days is forming wire armatures and covering them with felt or embroidery floss. I usually embroider a textured “bark” pattern onto the felt before sewing it around the wire. Thicker tree trunks involve a different process, which I wrote about in Part 1.

In the following video, you can see how I stitched felt to cover the section that branches off into 3 separate wire limbs.

Stay tuned for Part 4 in this series, which will be about the Baltimore Oriole. If you want to receive email notices when I publish new posts, please subscribe to this blog using the form below.

Inuit Doll remake

Posted on March 12, 2024 by Salley Mavor

In 1985, I made a velveteen Inuit doll with a seal appliqued on its parka for my son, Peter. When you make something for a toddler, or anyone for that matter, you never know how it will be received. Will they actually play with it or leave it in the corner? I needn’t have worried, because Peter loved this doll to the point where its arms and legs had to be sewn back on several times. All these years later, I have 2 really good reasons to make dolls for a new generation, because a few weeks ago Peter became a father! So, it seemed right that little Eddie and his 1 yr. old cousin, Elias would each have their own Inuit doll to love.

I found the original sketches and patterns for Peter’s doll in my files and unearthed pieces of cotton velveteen left over from my doll-making days. The only material I needed to buy was some sherpa fabric for the fur trim. This post includes photos and videos that show the process of making the 2 new dolls for my grandsons, one decorated with a snowy owl and the other with a fish.

Back in the 80s, when practically every checkout line at the supermarket had a rack full of homey women’s magazines, I designed sewing projects for Better Homes and Gardens. Sewing projects are conspicuously absent from today’s version of the magazine, which is limited to home decor ideas, gardening, and recipes.

I mostly designed cloth dolls, including one with a prairie bonnet that they styled on the cover of their December 1982 issue. You can also see a crèche that Better Homes and Gardens published in 1981 here. When I submitted a photo of Peter’s Inuit doll to the magazine’s crafts editor, they asked me to design 3 dolls, which were included in the December 1986 issue.

During this early phase of my career, I enjoyed coming up with project ideas and making prototypes, even though the pay was dismal and I signed away my design rights (I was young and inexperienced). By the end of the 1980s, I was ready to move on to children’s book illustration, which came with its own suite of challenges.

When I was designing projects for the magazine, writing out step-by-step instructions was my least favorite part of the job. Describing what I’d done in words felt overly analytical and thoroughly anal! It took years to learn to show and tell how to make something in a way that intuitive and visual learners like me could understand. Then, I was ready to write my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, which combines visual diagrams and step-by-step instructions for making little dolls. To find out more about my philosophy of sharing knowledge, please read this post.

Nowadays, I’m relieved to not have to explain in detail how I make something. Demonstrating my process through photos and videos is much more natural than describing every step in words.

I hope that you enjoy the following photos and videos that show how I embroidered the doll’s face, stitched and appliquéd the snowy owl, and sewed on the arm.

Baby Polar Bear Suit

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Salley Mavor

Last December, I made some small gifts, including a little version of my grandson Elias in his polar bear snow suit. I’m looking forward to making more mementos like this and hope it becomes a yearly tradition! These days, it seems that practically every children’s hat and hooded outfit comes with a pair of animal ears on top. That’s fine with me – the more playful, the better!

I also made new Inuit dolls, which I’ll write about in a future post. They are a redo of a project I originally made for my kids and designed for Better Homes and Gardens magazine in 1986.

Baby Polar Bear Doll
The 4″ doll is based on the figures in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, only I used wool needlepoint yarn (regular knitting yarn is too bulky) instead of embroidery floss to wrap the hands and feet on the pipe cleaner armature.

As usual, I painted multiple faces on wooden beads and picked out the one I like best. Even after painting thousands of faces, I still mess up sometimes.

The suit is made with some really thick wool felt that I was given years ago. It is probably manufactured for industrial purposes rather than little polar bear suits. The video below shows how I wrapped the feet and hands and sewed on the suit.

In the past year or so, I’ve used a hands-free phone/light stand made by Canvas that makes documenting my process a lot easier. I used to have to bug Rob to stop whatever he was doing and come film different steps with his camera. Now, I can take photos or videos whenever I want to. The downside is that I can’t get into the flow because I’m always thinking about recording some aspect of how I work. And there are times when I’m so engrossed that I skip entire sections of the process. That’s why my demonstration videos aren’t really tutorials. They’re more like peeking over my shoulder while I work. You might not see every detail, but you can get the gist of it.

After sewing on the suit, I made the hood – ears and all. The hood is made from a lighter weight wool felt.

The following video shows how I glued on the head and constructed the hood.

After the doll was finished, I got the idea of chain stitching Elias’s name and the year on the back. Yes, this will definitely be a yearly tradition!

Harvest Time – Part 7 (wee folk)

Posted on July 4, 2023 by Salley Mavor

In Part 7 in the continuing series about making Harvest Time, I share photos and commentary about the wee folk characters who populate the landscape. In the coming weeks, I will post more stories that focus on different aspects of making the fall scene, including the miniature storage containers and the embroidered trees. So far, I’ve written the following posts:
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom.
Part 6 covers the underground tunnels, roots and stones.

Harvest Time is the fall scene in a series of seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world, both real and imagined. Note cards and jigsaw puzzles of the this and other scenes in the series (Frosty Morning and Mossy Glen) are available in my Etsy Shop.

Everything I make includes some sort of living being with eyes, be they animal or human. I can’t imagine spending months working on a piece that is purely decorative, abstract or simply a landscape, without a storytelling element. The interplay between characters and their surroundings is what drives me to create. As I paint their faces, form their little bodies and stitch their clothes, I grow to care about them. This emotional connection is what motivates me to spend copious amounts of time creating an imaginary world that is worthy of their existence.

For this scene, I painted more faces than I needed, in different sizes and shades. That way, I could select a cast of characters later. I’m never sure how many figures I’ll need or exactly where they’ll end up. They are like actors in an improvisational skit or a group posed in a tableau.

The little people range in size between 1″ to 2″ tall. They were made the same way as the wee folk dolls in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, with slight variations. For instance, I used wire instead of pipe cleaners for their tiny armatures.

In keeping with the harvesting theme, all of the people are bringing produce to the mossy stump, where it will be stored in the cellar.

I’m often asked, “How do you knit their tiny outfits?” There might be someone out there who can knit or crochet a tiny sweater for a 2″ doll, but I challenge them to stuff their arms through the sleeves! Remember, this is make believe. The wee folk never have to bathe or change their clothes. Why knit, when you can embroider a piece of clothing directly onto a body? Rows of chain stitching are pretty convincing, don’t you think? I call it faux knitting.

Please stay tuned for more stories about making Harvest Time, including the storage containers and embroidered trees.
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom
Part 6 covers the underground tunnels, roots and stones.

Harvest Time – part 3 (felt leaves)

Posted on January 22, 2023 by Salley Mavor

In Part 3 in the series about making Harvest Time, I share photos, commentary and a stitch-minute video about embellishing the felt leaves that appear on the ground-cover and bushes. Please note that when I use the word ‘felt”, I’m referring to the noun, not the verb. Felting is agitating and manipulating wool fleece fibers with a barbed needle or soapy water to create a felted surface. That’s how I made the brown soil in the underground part, which I’ll describe in a future post.

In the coming weeks and months, I will post more stories that focus on different aspects of making the fall scene, including the toad stool mushroom, wee folk figures, needle felted tunnels, roots, stones and foliage of all kinds. Part 1 featured moss making. Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.

Harvest Time is the fall scene in a series of seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world, both real and imagined.
Harvest Time note cards and a jigsaw puzzle are available in my Etsy Shop.

When envisioning this piece, I wasn’t sure how it would come together, but that’s normal for me. I knew that I needed to figure out a way to clearly define the edge between above ground and below ground. This is the kind of thing I think about when doing busy work, like stitching hundreds of French knots. I’m always one step ahead, planning the next move. I ended up creating a kind of flap with two sections of felt “sod” that overlapped the underground tunnel to the root cellar.

Felt Leaves
After edging the felt leaves with blanket stitches, I bent wire to match the shape and stitched it to the outside edge. Then I kept going around until the wire was completely covered with thread. I used single strands of floss to give it a fine finished look.

I wanted to fill the ground cover with an eye-catching array of textures, colors and shapes that would balance the composition of the whole piece. To help the leaves perk up and create shadows, I pushed the wire stems through a small hole to the back of the felt background, where it became a leverage point.

Because this scene has an element of fantasy, I felt free to incorporate bright unnatural looking shades.

I searched through my stash and found some variegated yellow embroidery floss to use for the chain stitched veins on these hot pink leaves.

When I embellish with thread, I constantly think about how to enhance and articulate the form, without becoming too cluttered. For instance, adding a dark pink outline around the veins on this leaf help emphasize the lines.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I see that the leaves are all made with complimentary colors. That way they pop out at you, both visually and physically!

This Stitch Minute video shows how I made a wire edged felt leaf.

As you can see, I constructed this background piece separately from the other parts of the scene. At the very end, after months of work, I assembled all of the pieces and stitched the sections onto one stretched fabric layer.

I also made larger orange leaves for the berry bush that’s growing next to the moss covered stump.

In future posts, I will focus on different aspects of making Harvest Time, including the toad stool mushroom, wee folk figures, needle felted tunnels, roots, stones and foliage of all kinds.
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom
Part 6 shows the process of making the underground

Harvest Time – Part 2 (turkey tail mushroom)

Posted on November 13, 2022 by Salley Mavor

Harvest Time is the fall scene in a series of seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world, both real and imagined. Harvest Time and 2 other scenes I’ve completed and written about, Frosty Morning and Mossy Glen, are available as note cards and jigsaw puzzles in my shop here.

Turkey tail mushrooms or shelf fungi are found all over the world. They usually grow on dead hardwood stumps and downed hardwood trunks or branches.

In this Stitch Minute video, I demonstrate chain stitching the stripes and adding wire.

After we filmed it, I wasn’t happy with the overall shape and color combo, so I started over and made a new one that was more curvy and included orange and yellow.