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, making tea, hand gathering