Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Hiyaaaaaaaaaa Just so you know... you can now buy some of my bizarre creations online! Here -----> AppletiniTiny Just putting that out there for ya! No pressure! Alright... as of today there's only one thing listed but I swear as soon as I have better quality pictures of my goodies there will be more up on there pronto! Arrrriba, arriba, ondelay! On sunday I attended my first craft fair as a stallholder - actually a stallhelper because I was running my friend Helen's stall while she taught a workshop - but she let me sell my junk too! The fair was at The Print Haus, Cardiff , here's a picture of our stall: Super kawaii! Most of the stuff is Helen's, you can buy some of it here: Kawaii Crochet or check out the 'Our Friends' page above for more links! Here's some of the items I had on sale: Embroidered covered canvasses - Nick Cave lyrics: SOLD! Edgar Allan Poe Raven canvas available in my Folksy shop!  Creepy trinket box: coming soon to...

OK... it's not the right season at all for all these squash recipes but I'm naughty and not really into PCV (political correctness of vegetables) and more into eating whatever I feel like. Which is everything, all the time apparently. You can sub with a different kind of squash or sweet potato if you're crazy and don't like pumpkin. Ingredients: 400g (14oz) pasta (whichever kind you like best) 85g (3oz) butter 2 crushed garlic cloves 450g (16oz) cubed pumpkin pieces 2 tsp rosemary Lemon zest (to taste) Ground nutmeg (to taste) Salt and pepper (to taste) 1. Melt the butter in a big pan and add the garlic. Stir for approximately 1 minute and then add the pumpkin , rosemary, lemon zest, salt and pepper and nutmeg. Cover it and let it sweat for 15 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft. 2. Cook the pasta. 3. Mix it all together and for an extra special touch add a witty sprig of rosemary to each serving. 4. Eat and enjoy your seriously yummy pumpkin pasta. ...

I made this little starry eyed frog guy for my friend Rhonwen's birthday! It was tough to let him go... I used some strange green woven patterned cotton for his back with brown corduroy for his belly. All made from scraps of leftover fabric and lovingly hand sewn! Then I filled his guts in with polyester stuffing. A cheapy, quicky project with the hardest part being the darting. Boy am I making myself sound like a big time cheapskate today! Here's a not-so-great picture of his belly to get you back on my side: Awwwww! I don't know why that's cute, but it is. Unfortunately [again] I can't take too much credit for this project as I got the instructions and pattern from here ; I just simplified it very slightly. I would like to take credit for having extremely relevant bed sheets though. This froggy was born with the aid (or not) of a broken heart! Know what else aside from crafting cures a broken heart? New shoes . Oh yes. It's true.

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...

I just made this rather sweet little stripey number for myself... The blue and white jersey fabric was about £3 per metre at John Lewis in the January sales so I just made a really simple cap-sleeved top out of it (using my own pattern) and then I used a scrap of vintage jersey to trim/gather around the neckline and a spare button for decoration. Not the neatest job I've ever done; but pretty good for a few hours' work. This was my first try at using the stretch stitch on my machine too; don't ask me why I never used it before but I'm never going back to my old [incorrect] ways now! To make the pattern for my top I just traced around the neckline and other dimensions of a shirt I already liked. And the same with the sleeves - I just traced around each half of the sleeve, then taped the halves together. It's pretty easy to adjust the sleeves when you're pinning if the pattern isn't quite perfect. I pin everything together and make sure it's all as neat ...

Heeeeey you, check out these adorable embroidery floss bobbins from Wild Olive ... they are free and downloadable and printable and colourful [I've just printed them out in black and white though and can assure you that they are still mega cute]. Yes, I know you can just draw faces on the bobbins you ALREADY have... but look! Some kind soul has done it for you! There are some other cool projects and ting on the site, check the 'printables' section for more free goodies.

While I was trawling through old links yesterday I found this cute shirt I designed for my brother in law's (now defunct) merch company Teepot. I think I drew this around 5/6 years ago... I kinda like the beat up piratey/Duane Peters look of the cassette face, all black eyes and broken teeth. I never actually got one of the shirts for myself, although other people bought it! It's so weird (but awesome) to think that people paid money for something that I designed. Might be time to revive this little guy; maybe in embroidery form?!