Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Snikt Snikt! Today I was inspired by my recent trip to a vintage warehouse to make my own comic book bedside table! So here I am writing something of a tutorial so that everyone out there can so the same, because it's super duper easy. Before After What you will need: A boring old table (or other bit of hard furniture) Old comic book / zine / issue of National Geographic / porn / other visually stimulating material that you no longer want to read and don't mind cutting up (please don't cut up your ultra rare Spiderman #1 comic!) PVA glue mixed with a little water Paintbrush Paint in your choice of colour (optional) Wallpaper smoother (optional), mine was about £1 from Wilko Craft knife (optional) This is how I did it: First off put on some suitable music, I chose Bossanova by Pixies and to give you an idea of the time scale, the record is 40 minutes long and I'd completed this project from start to finish including washing off my paintbrush b...

Ello Poppets! For those of you just joining us I attend a weekly craft club on Saturday mornings; so here's the latest projects I've been working on there: Flag Queen For the Jubilee we made Union Jack flags using applique and a stencilled cameo of some lady (if you want to read about my stencilling technique it's best described here ). I left my edges a bit rough and ready because that's my style. Then I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it next, so I gave it to my mum. Aww. Hippo to be triangle Nextily we worked on some bunting - we are lucky enough to be partially fuelled by donations from local people who no longer have a use for their old supplies so three of the fabrics I used were vintage ones picked out from our hoards! I used orange binding tape because I liked how it picked out the oranges of the fabrics and contrasted with the purples and blues. Yeah! Then I used some purple ric rac which I scored at a charity shop a few weeks ago on top of...

iHola, todos! Since I haven't posted for a while I am going to do one big update, so big it will be visible from the moooooon, here we go: Owl Pouch Owlma Twoo twoo, Twit twit twoo Gwdihw! The prototype owl pouch, I will probably make more with different owl faces on. Probably. What you keep in there is your business; loose change, loose cannons... maybe your notes from Owlmaese class! Westbourne Craft Collective At the moment we are working on a big collaberative project all to do with spring flowers and bees, with the intention of entering into a competition. I am legit excited to see how it turns out and the subject of bees and their near extinction is a topic close to my heart, so I am really putting a lot of love into this. Here are the two main pieces I'm working on (although I have others in the pipeline): Ain't made of jello! Get behind a fellow! Black and yellow! Bleeding Hearts The Bleeding Hearts will be strung together on a branch so...

I picked up this Joy Division t-shirt from my local Primarché, I knew they had them in from a previous visit and schlepped desperately through every rail in the men's section until I found the last one - a size XL and £3! Stoooooked. Here are the before shots; huge and I mean HUGE Aaaand the after shots: So much better! I intended it to be a dress but it's really turned out more like a tunic, so I may add a panel to the bottom if I ever take it off for long enough to do so... nah. I am currently into resizing all my shirts with this 'grown-on' sleeve effect which works particularly well with L / XL shirts but can also be done with smaller sizes. I think it looks cute but it's basically just because I'm really lazy and impatient and like projects that only take 45 minutes (including posing time). I made this with the power of Larry David's stare

Hi y'all! My sister got a Kindle for her 30th birthday so I decided to make her this completely awesome but redundant bookmark that she'll never use! Why?! To remind her that real books are rad (although I have to say that after seeing her Kindle I think that that's pretty neat too)! The bookmark is Twilight themed and it's all kinda symbolic and stuff. I don't know why the lion appears to be two shades of orange in this picture because it's definitely not in real life! The doily was from the lovely Barrett House (as per), and the cross-stitch patterns were all adapted from things I found on the internet or my own design. I covered the back with white felt so that the workings don't come undone and it'll be more hardwearing. I'm chuffed with how it turned out and I hope she loves it! I made this whilst listening to Johnny Cash and watching Peep Show! (P.S. The Metamorphosis canvas I blogged about below has now been SOLD! That was pretty fas...

I've recently hit some tough times finance-wise, so seeing as I'm such a huge fabric hoarder I've started working my way through my archive pile of fabric to avoid buying any more and to spend time crafting inside instead of spending money outside. I finally decided to make a bag from this cotton flannel fabric - a regular square tote bag seemed too boring so I knocked this up based on a shape I've seen in Matalan in the past! Not bad considering that I was sick as a dead dog with a virus that day - I even managed to line it! The fabric was from The Fabric Fairy (as always), although I think I got the last couple of yards. Turns out flannel isn't the strongest or most ideal fabric for making a bag; it's best to sew around the seams a few times for extra strength or the fabric will stretch and fray very easily. Or maybe I was just carrying too many beers in my bag that day... It also tends to bobble and grow a lint layer very quickly. Oh well, it's g...