Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

This month (like many people) I have been gearing up for Christmas in a big way. Along with adding my new  Christmas Cards  to my Etsy shop , I also made some gift tags for sale using the same lino block and some leftover shrink plastic that I had. This is the first time I had experimented with such a project and I had a lot of really nice feedback about them: In fact, the whole lot sold out straight away - so they must have been good! I made mostly Christmassy ones but I also tried out a couple of other designs too, like my peacock: I'm trying to use up some of the 'less sustainable' materials and packaging that I have, so it's unlikely that I'll be making any more exactly like this - but I did design them with the intention that they be reused and/or hung on the Christmas tree as decorations! I am not a re-gifter but I am definitely a re-claimer of tags, ribbons and even gift wrap sometimes... would that be a re-wrapper?! 🙈 Any other re-wrappers out there make yo...

When I wrote my first blog post about making a block for  Little Amal's Skirt of Welcome  I never expected there to be a second part to the story from my perspective. But after posting a picture of the square that my Mum and I had made on my Instagram  I was surprised to be invited by  Annie Symons  to head up to London to help out with assembling the skirt. I was even more surprised when after I jumped at the chance, my Mum said that she was also up for the adventure too, so in October we headed from Dorset to Highgate Library, with sewing machines in tow. There we met up with a whole team of ultra talented creative people; some sewing, some ironing, some organising and all super friendly and welcoming. I was overjoyed to see our block coincidentally waiting at the top of the next pile on the table to be sewn in as soon as we arrived.  I did various jobs throughout the afternoon, including sewing, trimming, unpicking and sewing again, measuring, cutting, m...

I'm not usually much of a Christmas person (I'm more interested in Halloween), but now and then I have a flash of festive inspiration and this month it involved Christmas Trees! More specifically my Christmas Tree cards, which I designed and hand printed and are now available in my Etsy shop : If you love them so much that you want to buy three or more, you can use the code PUMPKINS at checkout for a 15% discount for a limited time only! Earlier in the month it was Libraries Week and I had the absolute pleasure of making bookmarks and decorating bookworms with the kids at Corfe Mullen Library. Here are some of their fab looking creations: As you might be able to ascertain from the photos, we made collaged bookmarks out of old (discarded) books (not new books, we don't cut up those) and yet again the children outdid themselves with their creative ideas; some wanted to add feathers and long looping ribbons to their bookmarks and there were googly eyes galore. Fun was had by e...

During September I worked on a project with my Mum in which we collaborated on a single square to be sent off as part of a bigger project called ' The Nationwide Skirt of Welcome '. The giant skirt is being made from many patchwork squares to welcome Little Amal (who is anything but little) to the UK and raise awareness for refugees - especially displaced children. If you want to know more, or to donate, please use the above links - at the very least you should check out the amazing puppeteering; I can tell you from first hand knowledge that working with these giants is not easy! It was my Mum's idea to take part in the project but given my history with giant puppets  I was happy to help! The theme of the skirt is British Flowers, so we decided to make a bluebell and dandelion applique and embroidered piece. I sketched out the design and we both worked on the actual making of the square. Here it is in its finished glory: It ended up being a good representation of both of o...

I've had a busy couple of weekends recently. Last Saturday, the 18th of September was my cat James'  16th birthday - which makes him about 80 years old in human years! I've had him ALL of that time, so it was a really special event and I wanted to commemorate it by making him something fancy. I'd had the crochet pattern for a small cat blanket for quite some years; regular readers will know about my dabblings in crochet ... I am by no means an expert but I love giving it a try with varying results! So here's the latest effort: It's also high time that we had some decent pictures of the boy himself on here so here you go: He had a very luxurious day with lots of pressies and certainly seemed to enjoy his blanket even though is was a zillion degrees that day! This blanket is made by crocheting each cat face square in the round, similar to a granny square and then sewing each piece together. I went with a different colour combination than the original pattern (whic...

Back in May I decided to make a gift for a young family member's second birthday and sadly not being able to find the pattern I had for  Karma Chameleon  I was forced to hit my local public library for some inspiration. I came across the book 'Sewn Toy Tales' by Melly and Me  (aka Melanie Hurlston) and fell in love with the cute faced characters - in particular one 'Darcy the Dinosaur' - and decided this was the toy for me! Or rather for the child in question.  I used some flowery fabric from my stash along with a plain semi-matching orange fabric and vintage green ric-rac for the ruff. To finish him off I used white felt for the horns (super fiddly to turn inside out but effective) and button eyes. Umm... can I keep it though? What do you think? The thing I love most about this toy is that it can stand up all by itself! I was in two minds about the choice of the flower fabric originally, but I'm really happy that I went with this one in the end because it looks...

On Monday I ran another children's craft workshop at Corfe Mullen Library. This time it was flower and plant themed and I had made a couple of examples for the kids to copy; a simple daisy in a plant pot made from single use cups and a drinking straw and my personal favourite; a venus fly trap made from a paper plate and some googly eyes. Can you tell how much I loved Sesame Street when I was younger? If you look really closely you can see that he has a 'fly' in his mouth. I showed these examples to the children but sort of just let them have at it and interpret them however they liked with the given materials (it's more wild that way): It's creative mess, OK? They came up with some really awesome plant creature creations! I really like that they thought to add their own features to the plants, like noses, tongues, teeth and stalks and thought of ingenious ways of attaching them too! I also really enjoyed this very simple flower design, which looks like it belongs i...

It's been a couple of years since I have run any children's craft activities but last Friday I was given the opportunity to lead a simple sewing workshop at Corfe Mullen Library. Using a kit available from Baker Ross, the children made some really cute 3D felt woodland animal decorations for their bedrooms! This was a fun tie-in with the Summer Reading Challenge theme for 2021 - 'Wild World Heroes'. Although the children who attended had varying experience with sewing, most of them just managed to get on with the kit with minimal help from me, so I was really impressed with their skills. I suppose that's the beauty of a kit that includes everything you need and is all set up and ready to go!  What is also interesting is that even though each child was given the set kit to work from, their finished decorations all came out looking beautifully unique and individual, with their own distinct characters. ROLL CALL! Lily the Fox and I Don't Know the Badger Poppy the O...

This past weekend I experienced the exciting combo of having my birthday and a good friend's wedding occurring on the same day, so I decided to treat myself by making a new outfit to wear for the occasion. I already had a stash of dressmaking patterns and fabric, so I chose one pattern that I had wanted to make for a while and a corresponding length of fabric and whipped something up! Regular readers will know that I am a lover of all things  vintage , especially vintage fashion so I was really pleased to find that I had a vintage fabric that suited the dress that I wanted to make, which was Simplicity 8505A - a reproduction vintage 1970s caftan: The fabric was gifted to me from a friend and I'm not entirely sure when it dates from but my best guess (from the colour pallet) would be 1980s / 1990s... but other people have said 1960s / 1970s so who knows: Vintage fabric from an unknown era If you'd like to vote for which decade this fabric comes from then please leave a comme...

Wow, it's been over two years since my last blog post! 😅 I've had plenty of exciting crafty adventures in the meantime and have lots to post about, so I'll start with some quick updates to get things going. Back in 2019 I was asked to drop in and chat on the  Culture+  podcast  Women Know Your Place . I resisted posting about this when it first came out because: 1. Fear of hearing the sound of my own voice in a recording (I know you know what I mean) 2. I thought I would come across negatively for talking about personal stuff (sharing is hard and doesn't always pay off) However, having reviewed the recording last week I have decided that those fears were completely unfounded so I'm sharing it now! In a nutshell, I talk about a few of the projects I had been working on at the time and then go on to reveal the reason why I have fallen off the radar a bit. SPOILER: I suffer from a thyroid related chronic illness that I don't talk about very often - if you don'...