Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Hello!  I unveiled a new card design last month; if you like my lion design but have always wondered where his body went, then this one is for you! It's available in my Etsy shop  and is perfect for many occasions; new babies, thank yous, birthdays, anniversaries and Mother's and Father's Day! Take a look at my  Greetings Cards  now! I'm looking forward to unveiling some more exciting news soon... but for now that's it from me. Sarah :)

Wow, it's been over two years since my last blog post! 😅 I've had plenty of exciting crafty adventures in the meantime and have lots to post about, so I'll start with some quick updates to get things going. Back in 2019 I was asked to drop in and chat on the  Culture+  podcast  Women Know Your Place . I resisted posting about this when it first came out because: 1. Fear of hearing the sound of my own voice in a recording (I know you know what I mean) 2. I thought I would come across negatively for talking about personal stuff (sharing is hard and doesn't always pay off) However, having reviewed the recording last week I have decided that those fears were completely unfounded so I'm sharing it now! In a nutshell, I talk about a few of the projects I had been working on at the time and then go on to reveal the reason why I have fallen off the radar a bit. SPOILER: I suffer from a thyroid related chronic illness that I don't talk about very often - if you don'...

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 part in a lino cutting taster class at  Walford Mill  with resident printmaker  Robin Mackenzie . Robin specialises in illustration and printmaking of the wood engraving and linocut variety and is just an all-round tip top bloke and jolly good egg. We started off the class by flipping through some print books for ideas of texture and mark making. Robin welcomes complete newbies to his classes (which is just as well as we nearly all were!); I've done a little bit of  lino printing  before but nothing to get excited about. Everyone brought a photo or sketch to work from but we were provided with all the other essential equipment we needed: I had an original sketch to work from: I wanted to do something fun and in my own unique illustrative style; although I knew that all this detail might be pushing it for a 2 hour class I was up for a little challenge! Once we'd all sketched out our compositions and were happy with the design, we proceede...