Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

On Monday I ran another children's craft workshop at Corfe Mullen Library. This time it was flower and plant themed and I had made a couple of examples for the kids to copy; a simple daisy in a plant pot made from single use cups and a drinking straw and my personal favourite; a venus fly trap made from a paper plate and some googly eyes. Can you tell how much I loved Sesame Street when I was younger? If you look really closely you can see that he has a 'fly' in his mouth. I showed these examples to the children but sort of just let them have at it and interpret them however they liked with the given materials (it's more wild that way): It's creative mess, OK? They came up with some really awesome plant creature creations! I really like that they thought to add their own features to the plants, like noses, tongues, teeth and stalks and thought of ingenious ways of attaching them too! I also really enjoyed this very simple flower design, which looks like it belongs i...

As Christmas is officially over, it seems like a good time to belatedly tell you all about the various crafty thingys I made for the festive period! First I started off with simpleish embroidered fabric decorations: [And a few paper ones...] These were inspired by classic retro shapes and designs and for the more complex embroideries I took inspiration from Constance Howard's book 'Inspiration for Embroidery'. Most of the fabric, paper and ribbon was salvaged / upcycled. Next I made cards in a similar retro theme: Photo by  LunarApple These featured an Intergalactic Space Reindeer with antennae so that he doesn't miss out on all his important Christmas telly [e.g. James Bond]. I also made cards with Christmas trees on but these seem to have eluded all photography. However, I did manage to knock up a quick reindeer gift bag too:  Here's a bonus picture of my marvellous cat looking splendid under our tree: That's it! Until next time!