Amy Mussman (left) and her mother Phyllis Mussman with a display of their handmade Mainely Primsical creatures, which they starting making in 2016 when a friend asked them to vend at a fair she was organizing. “We threw some stuff together, and then we got hooked,” Phyllis Mussman said. “It’s just so much fun.” (Elizabeth Walztoni photo)
Amy Mussman’s Westport Island kitchen table was full of Maine wildlife one Saturday morning – a loon wearing a bow tie, a smiling seal, a crow with a top hat, a fox in a scarf, a big round bear, and many more. The animals were handmade creations she and her mother, Phyllis Mussman, of West Bath, have been sewing together for eight years as “Mainely Primsicals.”
The business began in 2016, when a friend asked the two to vend at a craft fair.
“We threw some stuff together, and then we got hooked,” Phyllis said. “It’s just so much fun.”
She has been sewing for most of her life, and her daughter grew up with a craft project always underway. The Mussmans said they have always loved primitives, or crafts with a simple and historical design. As they developed their own creations, they said wanted to bring more cheer, personality, and whimsy than primitives often display – hence their business name, combining “whimsical” and “primitive.”
Phyllis recalled a craft fair customer saying their designs found the essence of the animal.
“I thought, to me, that’s [the definition of] primitive,” she said. “It’s like a line drawing. We don’t worry too much about if it’s totally anatomically correct, but does it sort of evoke the critter?”
The pair develops all of their own patterns. Amy, a former prop master for theater productions, pictures an animal in her mind, turns it around a few times, and translates it into a design which she and her mother then fine-tune through test runs. According to Amy, they have made over 60 species this way through the years.
The freedom to develop their shared, creative vision this way is an experience both enjoy.
“In theater, it’s always the director. It’s his baby or her baby, you know, somebody else’s baby,” Amy said. “These are our babies.”
Each specializes in different animals they create from start to finish themselves, except for the owls, which the Mussmans work on together. The two enjoy the unique personalities in each other’s animals as a result of making them by hand. Twelve seals, for example, all have different expressions from the variations in the embroidery that makes their faces.
The animals take shape in three to 10 hours, depending on the style – hand-sewing buttons as the suckers on an octopus’ tentacles, for example, is a labor of love.
“You really do have to not think about your time except as kind of a gift to yourself,” Phyllis said.
The Mussmans credit the artistic community on Westport Island, along with local fabric shops and their craft fair community for helping them develop the business.
The two vend at five or six craft fairs a year and also sell their animals online and at the Southwest Harbor Artisans Collaborative, which is open seasonally.
“Once you get into this whole craft fair business, it’s a wonderful community of vendors that are so helpful to each other,” Amy said. “That’s that’s one of the fun things about going to a craft fair meetings, all these talented, amazing, supportive people.”
The day-long craft fairs in high school gyms can be chaotic – Phyllis remembered her father taking her to watch the circus set up as a child, and setting up their booth evokes the same feeling – but the two love watching customers interact with their creations.
“More than one person has said ‘Yeah, these things just make me smile,’ and that makes me happy,” Amy said.
“It’s endlessly interesting,” according to Phyllis.
Whether creating Primsicals or taking on any kind of project, Phyllis Mussman believes giving oneself freedom from judgment and restriction when trying something new is important.
“I think as a society, we maybe try to be to lockstep about how we do things and what we think of things,” she said. “So many people say ‘Oh, I’m not creative. I can’t make anything’ … I just feel like everybody is creative. Like a good cook is extremely creative, and moms who invent things for their kids to do are creative.”
Along with their critters, the Mussmans offer reusable towels, placemats, table runners, and pine tree flag pillows. Animals run about $20-40 and are not meant for small children or pets.
For more information, go to mainelyprimsicals.com or find Mainely Primsicals on Facebook.
