Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

Just over a year ago my great gal pal Gemma over at  Dark Matters  asked me to make her some bespoke bunting  for her gourmet brownie stall business which was just taking off. Well last week she mentioned that the business is doing so well that she can now make what she calls a 'double pronged brownie attack' on the world [e.g. have two stalls open in two places at once] and therefore needed another string of bunting! Of course I was happy to oblige and I think it even turned out nicer than the original bunting I made for her: Fronting Backting I used all the same heritage style fabrics for the 'front'; plaid, houndstooth and gingham, but changed the 'back' up with some different ones; a titchy polyester check-like woven fabric and a geometric patterned woven wool which I absolutely love (but sadly don't have enough of to make a garment)! I used both the right and wrong sides of the wool to make alternate flags; one has more blue and one has more gr...

Almost two years ago I blogged about a blouse / shirt that my mum had made in ye olde years of vintage gone by, and I added a strange white collar which looked a little wrong and penguiny. Well I recently decided to re-vamp the blouse again with a different coloured collar; a blue very similar to the one within the pattern and it looks much nicer, behold: Before Nafter I also took in the sides and the arms (although you can't really tell from the photo) to make it slightly more fitted and less pyjama-y. It still has some baggyness though as it doesn't have any darts so I guess that was the style of Ye Olde Times. Here's a close up of the fabric: It's from Liberty! It feels very soft and nice and EXPENSIVE. Here's a peek of how I may desire to style it: Bow Selecter It also goes rather nicely with the oversized clutch bag I whipped up yesterday: I was fortunate enough to obtain the Art Nouveau fabric in a lucky dip bag from my good friend Helen, it...

The last two days of my internship at  Nelly's Treasures ! It's taken me a while to write these up as real life jobs / DJing / beach partying took over a little bit, but here we go: I did a lot of screenprinting on day 6, and although it started out well (with a lot of help from Nelly herself), towards the end of the day my technique started to suffer a bit and prints weren't fully coming out, or were flopping off the edge of the fabric. I could try and blame tiredness or distraction but I think it's a case of not being fully practised in the art of screenprint. It truly is a skill that I imagine most people don't fully appreciate, and I have utmost respect for Helen and anyone else for mastering it! Anyway I couldn't figure out why I could make clean prints in uni, with not-as-good equipment and a lot less space and why I couldn't do it at The PrintHaus , and I psyched myself out and never fully recovered. Helen even gave me a step to stand on, but it didn...

Today was day 5 of my work placement with Nelly's Treasures and it was mostly spent finishing off these babies: Babies Which I'm super proud of because I kind of saw them grow from little fabric eggs into fully rounded heart plushy cushions! They look so cute and fun, I can't decide which is my favourite! It's really exciting to see the journey of a product from start to finish and I'm glad that I'm getting to be a big hands-on part of it during my placement. I don't have much more to say about today except that time seemed to go very quickly whilst I was lost in a haze of lovely vintage fabric cushions and suddenly it was home time... boooooo!

Friday was day 4 of my internship for Nelly's Treasures . I did a lot more screenprinting onto vintage fabrics which are destined to be squishy cushions and then the lovely Jude from the PrintHaus showed me how to match colours exactly using the Pantone system. Very tricky and skilled! After that I cut out the 'Happily Ever After' prints I'd done the previous day into heart shapes for more squishy cushions and then, very unexpectedly I got to do a little 'modelling': Yesss, that's me again! Showing off my guns and gazing dreamily at nothing in particular... oh and Nelly's ace cheeky toucan top of course!!! Available on Etsy  NOW! Theeen Helen let me use her Amaaaazing with a capital A sewing machine, this one: Which is so smooth and easy to use I can see why her work is sooo well made! I have big machine envy! That was about it, another great day in all! Today I adventured over to Penarth to check out the Darlunio Illustrate 2014 Exhibition  ...

Still on my work placement with the fabul-oh-so  Nelly's Treasures in Cardiff! Yesterday (day two) was a Disaster Day for me; almost everything I touched seemed to go a bit wrong! The day started off well with some bonding over music tastes*, Photoshop work and paper cutting, which working as a team we did in no time at all. After we exposed some screens to print later on in the day, I was set a sewing task and couldn't seem to get the darned thing right! I blame the unfamiliar machine of course; it's like driving someone else's car, or playing their guitar. It goes but... not in the same way! Anyway I did a pretty good job overall in the end, due to my 'tenacious attitude' (my uni tutor's words, not mine). Later, I did a little bit of printing and although I have always been good at it in uni I managed to mess one up and 'flood under' the design, making the print all blobby. So I didn't feel very good about that at all! After that I mainly he...

As part of my uni course I have to complete a work placement within the textiles industry and write a 2000 word report about my experiences; this will conclude my first year of university! Which scares the bejeezers out of me! I'm lucky enough to be doing my placement with my great friend Helen at  Nelly's Treasures  and today was my first day. I'm doing a mini blog-within-blog about my experiences both to help with my report and so that others might know what to expect from a placement. Today we were based at  The PrintHaus , where Helen does her printing. There is a really nice community kind of atmosphere there and they run workshops and things at certain times so that everyone can have a go. Also they run Snapped Up Market, where I shared a stall with Helen once and started out my crafting life  many moons ago , so I can testify that that is very exciting indeed! The PrintHaus, Cardiff We started off with health and safety briefings of course, fire exi...