Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Hello and welcome back to my blog. I'm going to launch right in and say that whilst I try to keep this blog mostly textiles related, it wouldn't feel right to go on without acknowledging the passing away of my cat James, who featured in my posts on an infrequent basis. If you follow my Instagram , you will be very familiar with him. James was the hefty age of 19 when he succumbed to his various old-age related ailments last November and he was in my life, with me being his 'person', for all 19 of those years. Needless to say, losing him has caused a tremendous gaping scary void of doom in my life. It's been 3 months, and after having gotten over the initial shock of losing him, it seemed like time to acknowledge it here. Caring for him throughout his life - but especially in his old age - was a responsibility that I took very seriously, and it felt like more of a priority than Other Things, and I have needed time to grieve in every sense... so the textile news has ...

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 ...

Today's post is a little different than usual because I'm writing about something other than myself! On Wednesday I went with family to visit the American Museum in Britain; I was given a National Art Pass for Christmas and am trying to utilise it as much as possible - the AMiB is one of their places. whut meeee  The fancy gardens are being worked on at the moment so we didn't get to see a lot of those which was a shame. I did spot this rather lovely Art Deco-ey sculpture thingy though, which is maybe some kind of sundial...? My favourite parts were the Native American costume, with all its colours and patterns: And the Room of Many Quilts, especially this Thistle-Disguised-As-A-Pineapple quilt: is it a thistle? is it a pineapple? you decide And then I spotted a few hidden gems too such as this skull in a frieze: Wallpaper that understands and celebrates the glory of corn: Aaaand a quilted horsey! There was of course lots more things to see ...

Yesterday I took a day tripper out to the Isle of Wight to visit The New Carnival Company  at their fabulous studio space in Ryde. I was put in touch with them via a contact at the Arts Council, who (correctly) thought that my  costume and mask  based work would complement the costumes made by The NCC and that I might be interested in working with them. As a complete film fanatic, finding out how to make big props and costumes really appeals to me too. So yesterday I took two trains and then a ferry: I love boats, me and found myself on the island. I met the friendly and welcoming NCC team and after a bit of a chat and a lovely and much-needed cup of tea I was set straight to work on a taster day! 'Work' in this case meant sitting in on a prototyping session of the carnival costumes for a local school. The in-house artists collaborate with the pupils and teachers to come up with costume ideas based on the current year's Mardi Gras theme (this year's theme is Refl...

This week at Walford Mill Crafts we began taking down the  Fire  exhibition to start setting up the  Christmas at the Mill  exhibition! This is very exciting and obviously involves quite a lot of work for all staff so it was all hands on deck this week. Along with my usual full Wednesday, I put in an extra couple of mornings I had spare to help out. On Monday we began packing up the Fire exhibition; my main task was to pick out the items from the gallery that had been sold during the exhibition, pack them safely in bubble wrap, add contact details for their new owners and put them to one side ready for collection. I also helped to pack up jewellery and other bits n bobs that hadn't sold to be sent back to their maker(s). David Walker Ceramics Some of the exhibits from Fire were big and unusually shaped like the above ceramics by David Walker . These are a bit challenging to wrap up but very beautiful of course. On Tuesday morning I helped out again, this time ...

There's a short blurb up about my work and experience at Hand & Lock, London on my University website today! Click to see pictures and read a little about my work: http://aub.ac.uk/course-info/course-news/textiles-placement-hand-lock/

Today I did a few small errands such as buying stationery, making tea for visitors and folding / packing shirts: But mainly I continued with my creative beadwork samples. Here are some photos of what I've done so far: As I said yesterday, I chose materials that I liked the colours and shapes of and began with this sample: As I'd been asked to find inventive new ways of using existing stock I used the oversized sequins upside down, which sort of reminded me of satellite dishes so as I went on sampling, I made myself a mental mood board of sci-fi b-movies and tried to make new shapes and patterns that were reminiscent of UFOs or strange plants that could be growing on other planets. Here are some images that might help explain what I mean: Barbarella War Of The Worlds illustration by Edward Gorey Plan 9 From Outer Space AT-ST I still have some more work to do on these samples but I'm enjoying the opportunity to be creative and have had some very ...

Today I started work straight away on this little guy: Hon hon hon He's a French Bulldog and the beagle eyed can hopefully see that he's a little mis-aligned on the right hand side; I personally like offset works but it's not what H&L wanted for this piece so my job was to fill in the blank white bits along the bottom in satin stitch by hand and the extra grey bit will be unpicked later. This was he at the end of the day: [Designed by Hand & Lock, not me!] Still some very small bits left to do but I spent some time making sure it looked really good and Laura was pleased with it when I showed it to her as you can't see the difference between the hand and machine stitch; so I must have done a good job. I really enjoyed working on this, it was definitely my sort of thing to do and that always helps make a job easier. Other than that I ran errands, helped frame shirts to be machine embroidered and also helped with finishing the re-embroidered apron from y...

Today was the best day so far! Firstly we finished off the monogrammed pyjamas so that was quite satisfying. After that myself and another intern started to finish up the christmas window and make it look all beautimous. This was the window as I left it yesterday: And this was the window at about 3:45 today: A little bit difficult to see but we changed the font of the 'Merry Christmas from' part, added more wrapped gifts and fairy lights and snowflakes (I actually added them after I took this photo so I shall try to get another one tomorrow). I'm really happy with how it turned out and everyone at Hand & Lock who saw it said it was lovely so I feel extra chuffed. Other than a few small jobs that was it for today, but here's a picture of the mini tree I decorated yesterday:

This morning as I was in the library printing off some research I was surprised to be presented with a lovely medal in return for my entry into the  Postcards For Peace Competition . My first medal The medal is a reproduction of the original Peace Medal which was awarded by the mayor of Bournemouth in 1919 and which I referenced within my design so it's quite a nice memento to have: Original flavour The perks of the competition seem to keep growing; all the entrants will receive a medal and it seems that many of the designs will be made into postcards to be sold for charity! Still no news about the winner, but it's all very exciting anyway! In other news, I returned to an old favourite recently by making a couple of cross-stitched coasters as a gift for my penpal, Sally. I used to make these fairly often and sell them on my craft stall (until that seemed too easy!) so it was fun to think of new phrases for them: 'Treat Yo' Self' and 'Stay At Home...