Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Hey you guys, I am ill. Yet still I insist on slaving away over a hot blog and a cold mug of gazpacho to bring the craft to YOU! I finished off this t-shirt on Monday after initially trying to attach some weird collar of my own invention to it some months ago. Didn't work; project was left abandoned. I hacked off the old collar and finished it off with something much simpler. The fabric is that same soft jersey I bought on sale at John  Lewis and blogged about in April . I used New Look pattern 6483 and just adapted it for stretch fabric (ignored the side slits and darts and cut off the excess from the arm holes). The result is a slightly oversized but ridiculously comfy slouchy tee. Not the most exciting thing in the world but very adaptable! For the neckline I recycled the hem of my beloved old HMV uniform and just made a wide band over the raw edges. It turned out more fun than I thought it would! The buttons are from a local independent button shop (although I'm ...

I just made this rather sweet little stripey number for myself... The blue and white jersey fabric was about £3 per metre at John Lewis in the January sales so I just made a really simple cap-sleeved top out of it (using my own pattern) and then I used a scrap of vintage jersey to trim/gather around the neckline and a spare button for decoration. Not the neatest job I've ever done; but pretty good for a few hours' work. This was my first try at using the stretch stitch on my machine too; don't ask me why I never used it before but I'm never going back to my old [incorrect] ways now! To make the pattern for my top I just traced around the neckline and other dimensions of a shirt I already liked. And the same with the sleeves - I just traced around each half of the sleeve, then taped the halves together. It's pretty easy to adjust the sleeves when you're pinning if the pattern isn't quite perfect. I pin everything together and make sure it's all as neat ...