Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

This year I was asked by my sister to create a costume for my nephew to wear on World Book Day. He's 3 years old and obsessed with Mary Poppins (as I was and still am!), so a Bert costume it was! Or more specifically, Bert in the 'Jolly Holiday' scene. If you haven't seen the original (or need a reminder) you can check it out here ! It's basically a classic casual men's Edwardian seaside holiday lurk with striped blazer, bow tie and straw boater hat. So for this costume I used this Kwik Sew pattern  and super-simplified it (e.g. left off all the pockets and unnecessary bits) and customised my own stripey fabric. First, I cut out all the pattern pieces from plain white cotton, then I used red, yellow and orange ribbon in different widths to make each individual stripe, pinning them into place first and then sewing them down with the corresponding colour thread. 🙈 If you are reading this with the intention of making this yourself here's a tip - you need lik

This year my fellow art tutor and friend  Jeannie Brunskill  started a new after school art club at  The Reef , Colehill and she kindly asked me to help her out with running the classes. Little Indie  is a not-for-profit organisation and runs on a Monday afternoon from 3:30 - 5pm for children 5 - 10 years of age. Little Indie at The Reef, Colehill We've now broken up for half term, but I really wanted to share some of the incredible projects that we've been working on this year because they're so creative and brilliant! So in no particular order, here they are: Photo by Jeannie Brunskill It's what's inside that counts! Photo by Jeannie Brunskill This week the children finished off their 'Inside Out' houses, for which they designed, drew and coloured in a picture of their dream house! The picture of the outer house flips down to reveal the rooms inside and they had great fun dreaming up the interior spaces. The above is one particularly fabulous

Towards the end of last year I was working with the National Trust's Kingston Lacy  on their 'Creative Christmas' project for December 2018. Myself and two other artists selected female members of the Bankes Family  to represent via handmade decorations, which were then placed around the house as part of the Christmas festivities. This was the second project I've done based on the Bankes Family (the first being  Threads of Narrative ), so I feel fairly well acquainted with the family now. This time I based my pieces on Anne Bankes , who was the sister of William John Bankes , a stained glass artist in her own right and after William John's exile she took on much of the work overseeing the refurbishment of Kingston Lacy. Not a lot of detail about her life is known, however I was able to take a few of her personal letters, portraits and some photos to design a print in homage to her: I had this digitally printed onto velvet and cotton in two colourways, the cott