Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

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...