Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

I've been wanting to make more dresses to improve my sewing skills and kill time / use up excess fabric stash so since my friend Aimi is always complimenting my dresses I offered to make her one for her birthday. She had already picked out a fabric she liked from a bargain hoard I bought from lovely Helen : And although I secretly wanted to keep that fabric for myself, as everyone knows, bagsy is a complete and final done deal! I used vintage Style pattern 2382 again: Regular readers might remember that I used it before for this dress , except this time I made it sleeveless (last time I used the sleeve pattern from the overcoat and adjusted it for use in the dress). This pattern is not really intended for stretch fabrics, but the fabric I was using was stretchy, however I found that it didn't make much difference other than being slightly trickier to sew! Despite that it turned out as one of the most well-made and fabulous dresses I've ever created: And luckily ...

Just over a year ago my great gal pal Gemma over at  Dark Matters  asked me to make her some bespoke bunting  for her gourmet brownie stall business which was just taking off. Well last week she mentioned that the business is doing so well that she can now make what she calls a 'double pronged brownie attack' on the world [e.g. have two stalls open in two places at once] and therefore needed another string of bunting! Of course I was happy to oblige and I think it even turned out nicer than the original bunting I made for her: Fronting Backting I used all the same heritage style fabrics for the 'front'; plaid, houndstooth and gingham, but changed the 'back' up with some different ones; a titchy polyester check-like woven fabric and a geometric patterned woven wool which I absolutely love (but sadly don't have enough of to make a garment)! I used both the right and wrong sides of the wool to make alternate flags; one has more blue and one has more gr...

Almost two years ago I blogged about a blouse / shirt that my mum had made in ye olde years of vintage gone by, and I added a strange white collar which looked a little wrong and penguiny. Well I recently decided to re-vamp the blouse again with a different coloured collar; a blue very similar to the one within the pattern and it looks much nicer, behold: Before Nafter I also took in the sides and the arms (although you can't really tell from the photo) to make it slightly more fitted and less pyjama-y. It still has some baggyness though as it doesn't have any darts so I guess that was the style of Ye Olde Times. Here's a close up of the fabric: It's from Liberty! It feels very soft and nice and EXPENSIVE. Here's a peek of how I may desire to style it: Bow Selecter It also goes rather nicely with the oversized clutch bag I whipped up yesterday: I was fortunate enough to obtain the Art Nouveau fabric in a lucky dip bag from my good friend Helen, it...

I was recently blessed not only with the gift of a wonderful friend named Laura, but also with the gift of a wonderful friend named Laura who gives wonderful gifts of BIG BAGS OF VINTAGE FABRIC Big Bags Maudella 5443 And as I had previously been blessed with my friend Helen over at  Nellys Treasures  who recently gave me Maudella vintage pattern 5443 I decided to put these two elements together and came up with this: Faux Vintage But Also Really Vintage The brown squiggly one on the left I made for myself and the bluey greeny forresty one I made for Laura as a bon voyage present as soon she will be moving to Qatar to be a teacher. Nooooo! As for what else I've been up to; I've re-stocked my Etsy shop , am getting mentally prepared for uni (kinda) and today I attended my end of year exhibition for my Level 2 City & Guilds art course: Yup, that's me That's my work that I'm pointing the pointy at and also the lacy one above it. Yup! And her...

Hola! I'm still slogging away at the art classes; we just started a new unit which is all about ourlovelyselves and last night's lesson was on screenprinting, so I thought I'd share my work since I loooved it! Regular readers might have picked up on my love of all things 60s, Pop Art and psychedelic; I decided to base my print around that theme and chose Our George as my subject! Our George Aaand here's the result: A Hard Day's Bright Bad Trip Since I'm pretty much a beginner at screenprinting they didn't turn out perfect, but I quite like the imperfections because they are interesting and sort of melty-like. You have to have mega strong arms and big piano hands to be a really great screenprinter; which is why I never want to get on the wrong side of Helen at Nelly's Treasures !