Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Whilst recently perusing an issue of Embroidery magazine in my university library (yes, really), I came across an article about Leigh Bowser , a super talented embroidery artist who makes ultra rad pop icon brooches in her Etsy shop. On investigating her work further, I found that she also runs an ongoing campaign / exhibition called  The Blood Bag Project , which raises awareness for Diamond Blackfan Anaemia . Anyone can take part in the exhibition and since I am not monetarily blessed I thought this was a really fun and unique way to contribute to a worthy cause, so I did: I liked the idea of trying to make the bag look like a real transfusion bag and then filling it with different textured textiley things which represented the blood; I used ribbons, wire, lace, foam hearts, fake flowers, fabric scraps, shaped sequins and handmade cords, I also made cords and braided them together to make the 'tube' which hangs down under the bag. These were made from yarn, some shiny, sli...

I've been wanting to make more dresses to improve my sewing skills and kill time / use up excess fabric stash so since my friend Aimi is always complimenting my dresses I offered to make her one for her birthday. She had already picked out a fabric she liked from a bargain hoard I bought from lovely Helen : And although I secretly wanted to keep that fabric for myself, as everyone knows, bagsy is a complete and final done deal! I used vintage Style pattern 2382 again: Regular readers might remember that I used it before for this dress , except this time I made it sleeveless (last time I used the sleeve pattern from the overcoat and adjusted it for use in the dress). This pattern is not really intended for stretch fabrics, but the fabric I was using was stretchy, however I found that it didn't make much difference other than being slightly trickier to sew! Despite that it turned out as one of the most well-made and fabulous dresses I've ever created: And luckily ...