About Mary

MARY SALOME VANDERGRAFT

A love affair with textiles began when a child decided to make doll clothes out of scraps of fabric left over from her mother’s sewing projects. To this day, the vibrant sunrises and sunsets from a Southern Idaho childhood provide unending inspiration for Mary’s color pallet. Fabric stimulates almost all of her senses, but especially those involving the visual and tactile.

Mary began weaving fabric in the early 70′s and later, while living in Saudi Arabia, she learned to Batik. Upon returning to the United States she attended a silk painting workshop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The sensuous iridescence of the silk and the way it took the dyes had her hooked!

Soon thereafter she began making and marketing silk scarves and clothing, selling them at fine craft shows, galleries and one-of-a-kind boutiques throughout the United States. Now Mary offers her one-of-a-kind silk creations for purchase online.

Mary has taken classes and workshops at many premier craft schools including the Penland School for Crafts in North Carolina, Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine and the Design School at NC State University, Raleigh, North Carolina.