Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

As Christmas is officially over, it seems like a good time to belatedly tell you all about the various crafty thingys I made for the festive period! First I started off with simpleish embroidered fabric decorations: [And a few paper ones...] These were inspired by classic retro shapes and designs and for the more complex embroideries I took inspiration from Constance Howard's book 'Inspiration for Embroidery'. Most of the fabric, paper and ribbon was salvaged / upcycled. Next I made cards in a similar retro theme: Photo by  LunarApple These featured an Intergalactic Space Reindeer with antennae so that he doesn't miss out on all his important Christmas telly [e.g. James Bond]. I also made cards with Christmas trees on but these seem to have eluded all photography. However, I did manage to knock up a quick reindeer gift bag too:  Here's a bonus picture of my marvellous cat looking splendid under our tree: That's it! Until next time!

This week I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that this might be my last 'Volunteering at Walford Mill' post because I won't be a volunteer any more. The good news is that that's because I'm going to be a proper paid member of the team really soon! Yippee! This is great news for me since I've spent the last three years working on my degree in order to get a foot in the creative world's door; and following graduation I didn't have much luck with job applications which made me feel very lost indeed. I knew I didn't want to work in London, or for some big fatcat corporation, so finding a small, local gallery focussed on craft and education was perfect for me. Education is really important to me; as a mature student who's enrolled on many a part-time short course over the last ten years I am a huge advocate of learning. It's all part of growing and 'bettering' oneself after all! In my new Mill job I'll be helping with the e...

Not much to report this week; most of the day was spent doing officey type things; sending emails and looking after the social media of the Mill, which is one of the jobs I am assigned to do quite a bit. I also helped out in the gallery shop and with the Creative Academy (kid's craft). This week they were creating hand drawn bauble pictures like this one: Baubs by Jeannie By cutting templates and drawing around them and filling in the space: And then rubbing out the pencil line to leave a shape with pattern but no outline. Phew! This was an exercise in neatness and patience for everyone involved! That;s it really! Until next time!

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 ...