Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Yesterday was the official opening and Private View of the Textile Textures exhibition at Walford Mill Crafts , which some of my work is featured in. I feel very pleased and privileged to be included amongst some truly talented and established names in the world of Textile Art and this has given me a great lift, personally and professionally. Sometimes as a graduate you feel a bit lost out in the 'real world; but being included in an exhibition is an undeniable step in the right direction! Here's some pictures from the gallery: An overview of my zone: The 3D beadwork sampler I wrote about previously : Another strange, alien landscape textured drawing: Deep Sea Viper hand embroidery with audio reactive LED circuit (I program and install all the lights and circuitry myself): Hullo, I eat batteries Some hand embroidery n fluff n stuff: A framed textural drawing / investigation: Laser cut bugs in the window! Note to self: make more of these Sketch book

Yesterday I took a day tripper out to the Isle of Wight to visit The New Carnival Company  at their fabulous studio space in Ryde. I was put in touch with them via a contact at the Arts Council, who (correctly) thought that my  costume and mask  based work would complement the costumes made by The NCC and that I might be interested in working with them. As a complete film fanatic, finding out how to make big props and costumes really appeals to me too. So yesterday I took two trains and then a ferry: I love boats, me and found myself on the island. I met the friendly and welcoming NCC team and after a bit of a chat and a lovely and much-needed cup of tea I was set straight to work on a taster day! 'Work' in this case meant sitting in on a prototyping session of the carnival costumes for a local school. The in-house artists collaborate with the pupils and teachers to come up with costume ideas based on the current year's Mardi Gras theme (this year's theme is Refl

Last week saw this year's final Easter Break children's craft clubs at Walford Mill. On Tuesday we made Springtime Crowns, which were essentially paper crowns collaged with flowers, leaves and bugs. This was a nice simple project that the kids could do fairly independently; they seemed to enjoy it a lot and it was another successful class for me too! Here's a few photos of their results: Colourful and springy! That's it for now, but I'll be back soon!

I've spent all my spare time in the last month creating a new piece of work for the upcoming 'Textile Textures' exhibition at  Walford Mill . It's a recreation of an old 3D beadwork sampler I made during my internship at Hand & Lock a couple of years ago, which was influenced by Science Fiction . I tried to stay as close to the original work as possible, although not having access to the same materials meant that some of it had to change; however on the whole I think it came out even better than the original and I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to make it again for what will be a great exhibition! Here's some photos of the new work: Tiny fields of alien crops Although it's inspired by outer space, this work complements my Final Major Project degree work (which was inspired by deep sea creatures) in terms of colour pallet and general aesthetics. I really like that although both these projects were influenced by entirely dif

It's Easter half term and that means lots of kid's craft clubs to teach at Walford Mill Crafts! I started off my classes by making curly paper snails: Brian This was part of a 'speed-crafting' activity we put on for a local school wherein the children had 3 craft activities to do in 20 minute intervals. We had a theme of Easter / Garden and I decided to keep mine fairly simple since there's usually a range of abilities and it was such a limited time frame. Next, back at the Mill, we hosted a children's crafty birthday party for a little girl where the kids made jewellery and decorated boxes to keep their jewels in.  Caroline  created hand printed, cut and dyed butterflies and seahorses from aluminium for the girls to make into necklaces... and I was lucky enough to be given a leftover seahorse to make my own beautiful mermaid jewels (thanks Caroline)! Neigh-thanial Here's some of the boxes that the kids made: As you can see they had an Easter