My mother Thelma Townsend Sheldon (1921-1994) learned to do beadwork from her mother, Nellie Townsend (1882-1990), a Paiute lady from Cedarville, California. Nellie tanned hides and made beaded gauntlets. My mother went to Indian boarding schools, including the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California. She had a chance to go to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico, and always regretted not going – she said she had had enough of school after Sherman. She met and married my father and moved to the Tulalip Reservation where she learned to cook salmon in the traditional Puget Sound Indian way. She made me a buckskin dress out of antelope skins.

Here are some photos of her beadwork:

Thelma Sheldon beadwork gallery