Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Today I started working on some of the big, exciting carnival costumes at  Carnival HQ . The first job of the day was to spruce up an existing peacock feather backpack; mending bent feathers and tidying it up a bit using special industrial glue: We're planning to add a few more feathers to it so that it can be worn in the Mardi Gras... if all goes to plan it will be me wearing it! This is really exciting because I will have helped design and make my own costume, something more fabulous than I've ever worn before (and I've worn some pretty fabulous stuff)! After the peacock, I started on this little red and yellow number: Before Again mending loose feathers and adding a couple more in. This one had been rained on at last year's event and needs a bit more TLC; we'll be adding more red feathers when the delivery comes in. Here's a picture after I'd started mending it: After It still needs a little more work. I've never worked with feathers b...

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...