Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

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...

It's been a while since my last post about the Festival of Quilts, so here's a quick update. Aside from doing some much needed home improvements and working in a 'real job' I've been creating greetings cards and small embroidered framed pieces which are currently for sale at  Dot.Tea's  in Westbourne. I don't have any photos of these (naughty) but they are very much like my older pieces of work such as this one: Except in frames. And different. Also I've been doing some alterations and repairs on clothing which has been challenging at times but not entirely unfun and everybody seems very happy with my work and keep bringing me more and more things to do, so that's great. Next I'll be making some christmas decorations to sell at Dot.Tea's too, and will be posting about those when they're done. Probably. Since I only work in my 'real job' part-time and am just sort of muddling through life a bit at the moment since graduati...

This morning I began by continuing my beadwork from last week , trying new samples and finishing the old ones. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture but will add one tomorrow / later in the week! After that Laura asked me to touch up an owl she had machine embroidered; similarly to the French Bulldog I worked on last week there were a few not-perfect areas that needed a little mending. Here is the owl before I fixed it: Design by Hand & Lock, London And here is the owl after I'd made a few small changes: Whoo! Can you spot the areas I hand stitched? Didn't think so! This was another piece I really enjoyed working on as the design appeals to me a lot and it was fun to work on something with such an exciting colour pallet. The next job of the day was to take down the Christmas window  that some of the other interns and I had created in December. I cleaned the window, took down all the decorations and stored them for next year and then put The Collection back...

Day 14 was a half day as it was New Year's Eve, so I finished Mr. / Mrs. Dawg from the previous day ; filling in the remaining gaps with satin stitch (by hand), re-stitching some black detail over the top and then unpicking and trimming the excess grey area: Finished dawg And here's the back of him... I always find the back of embroidery works interesting, plus you can see more clearly the areas that I hand stitched (along the bottom): I was really happy with how he turned out and so was Laura, plus I really enjoyed working on it so this was a success in every way! After that I helped with trimming threads and folding some shirts that had been machine embroidered and then it was home time. On day 15 I was asked to make some small beading samples, my brief was that I could use whatever I liked and to be creative, so that was very exciting! Having not done much in the way of bead work I think I may have had an advantage in that I wasn't constricted by any 'rules...

First job of the day was to cover the machine embroidery font display boards which are shown to customers choosing their embroidery style. This is the front of the board: And the back of the boards looked like this before they were covered: All those stringys criss-crossing everywhere were getting snagged on things and generally looking a bit untidy so they needed to be covered. One of the other interns and I found some navy blue fabric and stitched it on by hand, using the invisible stitch so that they would look extra neat. Here's the result: Much neater I think... I covered two of these which took most of the day as it was very fiddly sewing onto the hard backed board. After that I had to recover an embroidery frame with the backing canvas stuff, my most feared job after the other day , as major strength and multiple hands are required... but actually as I'd already done it once and had to re-do it, I knew what I was doing this time and did it right the first time a...

Today I sewed some crystals onto a dress bodice and ironed pillowcases but mostly I finished off the blanket I had started appliqueing yesterday. This job seemed to have taken me a very long time but I think this was because firstly the embroidery frame I was using was a bit loose / broken making the tension difficult to work with and nextly because I am still a learner of course. Being around people who work very fast and efficiently all day can sometimes make you forget that as a learner you will naturally work a little bit slower. Anyway my boss was pleased with the job I had done so that's all that matters ultimately. Besides this, I often tell myself that it's best to do a job well the first time rather than rushing it and having to re-check / re-do it several times; in the long run you will probably save time and your own mind from going batty. I was also asked today what the point of me writing this blog was. I didn't really give a sufficient answer to that person...

Day four was an odd job day; firstly we finished off the monogrammed pyjamas and then I was given a small task cutting embroidered letters out to be appliqued onto a blanket at a later date. Here is the embroidery before:  And after: As you can see I had to cut them suuuper close to the edges which was quite tricky as there were lots of awkward angles and little bits to get into and of course I had to be careful not to snip the embroidery itself!  After that there wasn't really much else to do, so I was allowed to begin my own project learning a new technique right there with the masters of embroidery! I decided to learn Goldwork  (which you can learn about if you click that link); I'm not going to give away all of Hand & Lock's secrets by going into details so I'll just show you a picture of the work so far: This is the first part, the couching down of threads. I've been told that I am pretty good at this for a beginner; in fact some of the sta...

Today was the best day so far! Firstly we finished off the monogrammed pyjamas so that was quite satisfying. After that myself and another intern started to finish up the christmas window and make it look all beautimous. This was the window as I left it yesterday: And this was the window at about 3:45 today: A little bit difficult to see but we changed the font of the 'Merry Christmas from' part, added more wrapped gifts and fairy lights and snowflakes (I actually added them after I took this photo so I shall try to get another one tomorrow). I'm really happy with how it turned out and everyone at Hand & Lock who saw it said it was lovely so I feel extra chuffed. Other than a few small jobs that was it for today, but here's a picture of the mini tree I decorated yesterday:

Today was my first day interning at Hand & Lock  in London! I didn't really know what to expect at all; I knew that all the people there were lovely as I came for an interview earlier this year so luckily I wasn't too nervous. There are also a few other interns there so I wasn't completely on my Tod. I won't go into specifics about what I did today... but I will share this image from the workroom that I pinched from the Hand & Lock Instagram (hoping they don't mind as I forgot to take my own photos!): Festive Spirit And I can reveal that I got to play with these too: Shiny Sequince Gown That's about it! Worst part of the day was the commute into and out of central London; quite the experience when you're used to living in sleepy Bournemouth town! Follow Hand & Lock on Instagram Or Facebook if that's more your thing

Friday was day 4 of my internship for Nelly's Treasures . I did a lot more screenprinting onto vintage fabrics which are destined to be squishy cushions and then the lovely Jude from the PrintHaus showed me how to match colours exactly using the Pantone system. Very tricky and skilled! After that I cut out the 'Happily Ever After' prints I'd done the previous day into heart shapes for more squishy cushions and then, very unexpectedly I got to do a little 'modelling': Yesss, that's me again! Showing off my guns and gazing dreamily at nothing in particular... oh and Nelly's ace cheeky toucan top of course!!! Available on Etsy  NOW! Theeen Helen let me use her Amaaaazing with a capital A sewing machine, this one: Which is so smooth and easy to use I can see why her work is sooo well made! I have big machine envy! That was about it, another great day in all! Today I adventured over to Penarth to check out the Darlunio Illustrate 2014 Exhibition  ...

Still on my work placement with the fabul-oh-so  Nelly's Treasures in Cardiff! Yesterday (day two) was a Disaster Day for me; almost everything I touched seemed to go a bit wrong! The day started off well with some bonding over music tastes*, Photoshop work and paper cutting, which working as a team we did in no time at all. After we exposed some screens to print later on in the day, I was set a sewing task and couldn't seem to get the darned thing right! I blame the unfamiliar machine of course; it's like driving someone else's car, or playing their guitar. It goes but... not in the same way! Anyway I did a pretty good job overall in the end, due to my 'tenacious attitude' (my uni tutor's words, not mine). Later, I did a little bit of printing and although I have always been good at it in uni I managed to mess one up and 'flood under' the design, making the print all blobby. So I didn't feel very good about that at all! After that I mainly he...

As part of my uni course I have to complete a work placement within the textiles industry and write a 2000 word report about my experiences; this will conclude my first year of university! Which scares the bejeezers out of me! I'm lucky enough to be doing my placement with my great friend Helen at  Nelly's Treasures  and today was my first day. I'm doing a mini blog-within-blog about my experiences both to help with my report and so that others might know what to expect from a placement. Today we were based at  The PrintHaus , where Helen does her printing. There is a really nice community kind of atmosphere there and they run workshops and things at certain times so that everyone can have a go. Also they run Snapped Up Market, where I shared a stall with Helen once and started out my crafting life  many moons ago , so I can testify that that is very exciting indeed! The PrintHaus, Cardiff We started off with health and safety briefings of course, fire exi...