Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Christmas is now all set up at the Mill and looking fabulous! Here's a few pictures: Looking pretty splendid indeed! Most of the hard work and graft was down to Krishula, Christine and Mel, although I wrapped most of the presents under the tree, and helped with decorating the smaller christmas tree and shop displays that can be seen in the last two pictures! I haven't ever really been involved in creating retail displays to this standard before, so I'm learning a lot as I go along and the staff have been very encouraging and helpful, which is lovely. I've been working in the gallery shop a more the past couple of weeks and have come to terms with the till and general day to day happenings now. I think! This week I was helping  Debby  with jewellery creating again; using her beautiful hand painted papers to make unique pieces which will be finished with resin. Here are a few that I was working on this week: In the foreground and left you can se...

Now that my nephew has had his first birthday I can finally write about what I made him; Karma the Chameleon [ pattern by Janine Holmes]. This is the most complicated thing I've crocheted to date, although I have been crocheting for a few years now (mostly squares for a never ending blanket). I actually found it a lot less complicated than I thought I would and enjoyed making it which leads me to believe that I should be doing more crocheting than I currently am! Here it is not camouflaging particularly well with its surroundings: I made a change to the pattern in the sense that I used a self-striping kind of wool instead of using remnants to create my own stripes (mainly because I have no excess yarn stash). Although it's not as colourful as the original  I like the way it turned out. The yarn I used is Euro Baby Maypole  in Sapphire Blue. Ooooh! The original pattern [as I mentioned] is by Janine Holmes of Moji Moji Design, and her website is well worth a look as ...

This week at Walford Mill Crafts we began taking down the  Fire  exhibition to start setting up the  Christmas at the Mill  exhibition! This is very exciting and obviously involves quite a lot of work for all staff so it was all hands on deck this week. Along with my usual full Wednesday, I put in an extra couple of mornings I had spare to help out. On Monday we began packing up the Fire exhibition; my main task was to pick out the items from the gallery that had been sold during the exhibition, pack them safely in bubble wrap, add contact details for their new owners and put them to one side ready for collection. I also helped to pack up jewellery and other bits n bobs that hadn't sold to be sent back to their maker(s). David Walker Ceramics Some of the exhibits from Fire were big and unusually shaped like the above ceramics by David Walker . These are a bit challenging to wrap up but very beautiful of course. On Tuesday morning I helped out again, this time ...

This week I was helping out with the beginnings of putting together the special Christmas exhibition in the gallery. The first job of the day was to wrap up some of those pretend fake presents that always look so much nicer than any actual real presents. This was quite fun, as I actually enjoy wrapping gifts, plus it's amazing what you can do with just a little bit of brown paper and ribbon: Prizes After that I spent quite a while carefully unwrapping deliveries, checking them over and pricing them before wrapping them all carefully back up to be stored until the changeover to Christmas. Most of the goodies I unwrapped were ceramics and here's a couple of my favourites: Jessica Thorn Super cute cups, jugs and spice shakers by  Jessica Thorn , white outside with coloured seams and insides. Very yummy indeed! Alex Allday And very pretty, delicate ceramics by  Alex Allday  with overlapping surface patterns and textures, giving them a sort of 'lacy' effect. S...

My third day of volunteering at Walford Mill Crafts began with the creative cupcake decorating workshop for kids. This course is run by Lauren Foster of The Cakery Shop  and it was a lot of fun. First we set up the workshop with tools of the trade and places for everyone: Then once everyone had arrived Lauren demonstrated on some sample cupcakes a few techniques for the kids to try out: I can confirm that these were delicious And after that the kids were let loose to decorate theirs however they pleased, and here are some of the results: The kids were really clever and creative and didn't just stick to the examples that were shown. I have never decorated a cupcake and therefore mostly stuck stickily to the perimeter passing different coloured icings and tools and giving tidbits of common sense type advice. And talking about cats. After that it was time to clear up and then finish the decorative christmas kite I started making last week for the kids workshop on 17th ...

Today I started out by finishing the Halloween creations from last week. There's three kids' workshops coming up; Spooky lanterns (which I created last week ), mummies and monsters and Halloween cupcake decorating. This morning I made the mummies and monsters samples to show the kids, so without further ado here they are: Many-eyed alien / monster, Vampire, Mummy Cone Dracula  I think they're all pretty exciting, but the vampire guy is my favourite. Other than specifically using bandages to make the mummy I had free reign to do anything I wanted which was really fun. After some general admin duties (washing out jam jars for the lantern workshop) and lunch, it was time to start working on some christmas goodies! Decorations for the christmas exhibition and decorative christmas kites for another upcoming workshop. I didn't take any photos of those yet but all will be revealed in it's glittery gloriousness soon! Then at 4 o'clock it was time for the ...

It's been a while since my last post about the Festival of Quilts, so here's a quick update. Aside from doing some much needed home improvements and working in a 'real job' I've been creating greetings cards and small embroidered framed pieces which are currently for sale at  Dot.Tea's  in Westbourne. I don't have any photos of these (naughty) but they are very much like my older pieces of work such as this one: Except in frames. And different. Also I've been doing some alterations and repairs on clothing which has been challenging at times but not entirely unfun and everybody seems very happy with my work and keep bringing me more and more things to do, so that's great. Next I'll be making some christmas decorations to sell at Dot.Tea's too, and will be posting about those when they're done. Probably. Since I only work in my 'real job' part-time and am just sort of muddling through life a bit at the moment since graduati...