Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

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, m...

Yesterday I had a day's takeover at the Nutty Parrott  Studio at Walford Mill Crafts. The studio is the shared space of Caroline Parrott  and Wendy Nutt , who are both lovely and extremely talented ladies! During my takeover, I (wo)manned the shop for them and was able to use the space to create some of my own work too. Here's me outside the studio: Nutty Appley Parrott? And here's the bug brooches that I was working on whilst I was there: Buggies These will be available to buy soon from my Etsy store, or directly from me. They are designed from one of my original illustrative drawings, then laser cut onto specially chosen materials (wood and acrylic) in a fabulous colour pallet, then the bug brooches are hand finished with a hand painted, handmade bead and a handmade tassel all made by me! I also 'embroider' them a bit with patterns through holes in their bodies. These are really fun, oversized statement jewellery, not intended for the faint of heart! B...

On thursday and friday this week we mainly worked on a set of costumes representing the  Delhi Durbar , including red, white, blue and gold tent skirts and a giant elephant puppet! The main part of the skirts had already been made last week, so we just had to decorate and finish them with the Equals group (who will be wearing them next saturday). The first part of this process was to finish the decorative side panels by covering them with fabric: And cutting them out with the most ginormous pair of scissors I've ever seen! Then goldifying them: Then adding wire inside so that they can be bent into a 3D effect (this will make sense later): After that they were all hand printed with a stamp Gina had made from foam and gold paint: Before After Everyone in the group had a go at printing which was another fine example of teamwork; I did the first couple of prints, then I showed the next lady how to do it, and she showed the next and so on! Then when they were dr...

Yesterday I took a day tripper out to the Isle of Wight to visit The New Carnival Company  at their fabulous studio space in Ryde. I was put in touch with them via a contact at the Arts Council, who (correctly) thought that my  costume and mask  based work would complement the costumes made by The NCC and that I might be interested in working with them. As a complete film fanatic, finding out how to make big props and costumes really appeals to me too. So yesterday I took two trains and then a ferry: I love boats, me and found myself on the island. I met the friendly and welcoming NCC team and after a bit of a chat and a lovely and much-needed cup of tea I was set straight to work on a taster day! 'Work' in this case meant sitting in on a prototyping session of the carnival costumes for a local school. The in-house artists collaborate with the pupils and teachers to come up with costume ideas based on the current year's Mardi Gras theme (this year's theme is Refl...