Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

This month I'm lucky enough to have been chosen as the featured artist for Balaclafa, a small gallery in Caernarfon, North Wales. I'm always looking for opportunities to exhibit outside of my local area (Dorset) and thus spread the joy of my unique textile art all over the darn place, so to have been asked to show work so far afield is fantastic. I decided to show a mixture of some of my older work alongside the newer prints, brooches and cards that I've been creating. It was brilliant to rediscover some of these pieces that hadn't seen the light of day for a couple of years and I found it quite inspiring and reinvigorating to look over it all again. Without further ado, here are some pictures and thanks to Menna and all at Balaclafa for setting it all up and having my work there! Stickers and Mixed Media  Stickers, Temporary Tattoos and Mixed Media Textile Mask Cards, Prints and Mixed Media Textile Mask Temporary Tattoos, Stickers and Brooches ...

This week  Threads of Narrative  (my shared textile project with Lisa Earley) opened at Kingston Lacy in Wimborne. They've incorporated some of our work into their larger exhibition 'Beyond the Portrait' about some of the ladies of the Bankes family and we've got our own space in the laundry room out in the courtyard. If you didn't get around to seeing the exhibition the first time at Walford Mill Crafts, then this is a great chance to see it since it will be on until October! Here's a few pictures I took today: Apron Strings - Sarah Appleton 2018 Little Hilary - Sarah Appleton 2018 That's me - hieee!  Other than that, I'm currently working on a big private commission which I'll post progress on soon, and hopefully there will be more exciting news to come too. Byeeee!

Threads of Narrative is still running at  Walford Mill Crafts  and will be staying there until 22nd April, having been extended due to popular demand (or something)! After the original opening date was postponed due to the snow, it's great that more people will be able to see the work during the extra time. After it's finished at Walford Mill, the show will be moving on just up the road to  Kingston Lacy  - the last home of the Bankes family - where it will be on display for even more people to see! I'm really looking forward to seeing my work placed in the home of the family it was inspired by and will be so proud to see it there. More details of this exciting development to come! Without further ado, here's some photos of our launch event (photos by Steve and Sarah Appleton): Lots of people came along (thank you if you were one of them), including Jude the dog! 'My Own Darling Mummy' - Sarah Appleton 'Apron Strings' - Sarah Appleton ...

I've been a bit rubbish at posting blogs so far this year, this is mainly due to finishing all the work off for the Threads of Narrative exhibition, which opens this week at Walford Mill Crafts in Wimborne. If you've missed my previous posts about this project, you can read a bit more about the beginnings  here ; but in a nutshell the project is a textile exhibition about the Bankes Family of Dorset. Now all the work is complete and up I have more free time to talk about it... or at least post pictures! Here are the two main pieces I've made: My Own Darling Mummy This is the pink neoprene dress I posted about previously, now complete with lights, words and frills. I'm pleased with how it turned out; as with any project there are things I would have liked to have added or improved if I'd had more time, but time just trickled away with this huge commission and I had to end it somewhere! Here are a couple more pictures, I will of course take higher quality shots...

Yesterday I was so excited about getting my  Society6  shop up and running that I completely forgot to post about another thing I meant to write about. Last Friday we had a drawing class with  Dan Heath  for developing themes n stuff; which made a nice change as it's usually an all female year group with all female teachers [not that I have a problem with women of course, being one myself, but it's nice to hear a man's perspective every now and then]. I struggle with drawing days because I can be disheartened when what's on the paper isn't the same as what's in my brain, but by the end of this day I had produced something I really liked: Donald Trompe-l'œil It's a 3D heart made from photocopies of my work, stuffed inside, sewn around the edge and with stringys coming all out of it. It looks very  Trompe-l'œil; a word I can spell but not pronounce, so don't ask me; and the scan sort of makes it looks like  Trompe-l'œil within  Trompe-l...