Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

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...