Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Snikt Snikt! Today I was inspired by my recent trip to a vintage warehouse to make my own comic book bedside table! So here I am writing something of a tutorial so that everyone out there can so the same, because it's super duper easy. Before After What you will need: A boring old table (or other bit of hard furniture) Old comic book / zine / issue of National Geographic / porn / other visually stimulating material that you no longer want to read and don't mind cutting up (please don't cut up your ultra rare Spiderman #1 comic!) PVA glue mixed with a little water Paintbrush Paint in your choice of colour (optional) Wallpaper smoother (optional), mine was about £1 from Wilko Craft knife (optional) This is how I did it: First off put on some suitable music, I chose Bossanova by Pixies and to give you an idea of the time scale, the record is 40 minutes long and I'd completed this project from start to finish including washing off my paintbrush b...

My lovely friend Kawaii Helen from Nelly's Treasures sent me link a few days ago to a tutorial for overhauling old penny loafers . Which excited me in my tummy department. Behold before: Behold after: Rawr Much more tinglifying I think? The only things I did differently from the tutorial was that I used a flocked/velvet/furry fabric that I had lying around (as opposed to felt) and I used this kind of UHU glue because I thought a) it might work better on patent leather b) it is transparent so if I get it all over my hands/shoes/face it's not too much of a big deal. You can hardly tell they're DIY'ed (unless you are kissing my shoes) and best of all this project took around 20 minutes, despite being slightly fiddly! And it's like having new shoes without having to pay for new shoes! Yessssssss! Made to the tunes of The Detroit Cobras - Baby!

Well in all my excitement at blogging about Nothing New yesterday I forgot that I do, in fact, have Something New to blog about! How silly! It's actually technically not new either since it's a refurbished second hand garment; unfortunately I forgot to take a 'before' picture but here's the 'after': Suits you sir Now you will have to use your brainbox to imagine this shirt with no collar at all; just a plain round neck. Retro-a-go-go, but not terribly flattering. My mum made this shirt many moons ago (I don't ever remember seeing her wearing it); she'd even hand sewn all of the hems; and earlier this month I found it shoved in a 'to go' pile! Whuuuut! Obviously I was not going to cut this bad boy up, so a collar was the only option. I confused myself totally with the button / placket situation, so I made the collar finish short of that area and then created a bow tie effect to fill in the weird-looking space. I am really pumped with h...

Ello Poppets, I've been making band t-shirts again! I wanted a Riff Randells t-shirt, a stripey Riff Randells t-shirt, because on the cover of the first record I bought by them they are all wearing stripey t-shirts, see? So rad it should be a crime I had the iron-on letters leftover from another project and the red fabric is part of an old t-shirt. I just ironed the letters on, drew around them in the shape I fancied, cut that out and appliquéd it on. And then I made another one: Two very different bands, two very similar shirts. I had originally wanted the shape to be an explosion , inspired by Roy Lichtenstein but then I decided that clouds are nicer and just as pop-arty. And that's all I have to say about this except that now I have 2 new favourite t-shirts (3 if you count the extra one I kept plain). I am pretty crazy bout stripes y'all! This post was generated by stripes, The Riff Randells, Huggy Bear , Big Boys and recycling.

The finished thang! Hi there Zoonies! I embroidered this white pillowcase about forever ago and then it gradually started to disintigrate after some hardcore sleeping hours. And washing machine tumbles (my lawyer said I should put that in there). I didn't want to waste my many hours of glaborious work so I decided to save the important pieces and re-attach them to something else. BUT WHAT?! I know! Another boring old  pillowcase of course!!! So I did. Boring ol' thang! I left the edges all raw because I am lazy I really dig that look and sometimes I like to have something to chew on while I'm sleeping. Aaand I used a co-ordinating / similarly themed fabric I had leftover from another project for a panel. Then I just added some lace for that extra fancy touch. Now I have a trio of exotic Mexican themed pillowcases! The patterns are from Sublime Stitching's Dia De Los Muertos and Lucha Libre sheets.

I finished my felt owl this week at the Westbourne Craft Collective. He's sleeping because it's the daytime, yeah.

Today my sister and I decided to head down to the local library to check out the craft club which meets weekly there. I've never been to a crafty gathering before so it was intimidating for me, but we had a brillo pads time!   I started to make this psychedelic needle book, inspired by my love of all things 60's and swirly. I added my own flower shaped buttons and I might work on it some more at home seeing as we're starting summat else next week (not quite sure how we're going to keep up with the others, eeeeeep). I think it will be cute when it's done. Keep the faith.

I picked up this Joy Division t-shirt from my local Primarché, I knew they had them in from a previous visit and schlepped desperately through every rail in the men's section until I found the last one - a size XL and £3! Stoooooked. Here are the before shots; huge and I mean HUGE Aaaand the after shots: So much better! I intended it to be a dress but it's really turned out more like a tunic, so I may add a panel to the bottom if I ever take it off for long enough to do so... nah. I am currently into resizing all my shirts with this 'grown-on' sleeve effect which works particularly well with L / XL shirts but can also be done with smaller sizes. I think it looks cute but it's basically just because I'm really lazy and impatient and like projects that only take 45 minutes (including posing time). I made this with the power of Larry David's stare

After all the manic embroidering I've been doing lately I decided to take a break and work on some clothing reconstruction. My first project was 'prom' style dress to cute tulip cocktail dress. This is what I did (I'm hesitant to call it a tutorial as my pictures aren't great and my description probably won't be much better), click on the pictures for more detail: I've had this somewhat boring, frumpy dress lying around for years (originally from New Look); I'd thought about getting rid of it a few times but always held back because I am crazy about the fabric. I dug it out and tried it on this weekend and found that while the full on skirt and the length just didn't float my boat, the top half fit perfectly... and thus a plan began to form! First I figured out how much I wanted to trim off the bottom (5.5") and then undid the side seams to just over half way. Next I pinned the wrong side of the skirt into the shape I wanted - an angle fro...

I made this little starry eyed frog guy for my friend Rhonwen's birthday! It was tough to let him go... I used some strange green woven patterned cotton for his back with brown corduroy for his belly. All made from scraps of leftover fabric and lovingly hand sewn! Then I filled his guts in with polyester stuffing. A cheapy, quicky project with the hardest part being the darting. Boy am I making myself sound like a big time cheapskate today! Here's a not-so-great picture of his belly to get you back on my side: Awwwww! I don't know why that's cute, but it is. Unfortunately [again] I can't take too much credit for this project as I got the instructions and pattern from here ; I just simplified it very slightly. I would like to take credit for having extremely relevant bed sheets though. This froggy was born with the aid (or not) of a broken heart! Know what else aside from crafting cures a broken heart? New shoes . Oh yes. It's true.