This is based on an illustration by Cat Thurman. The koi is fairly large (about the size of a sheet of A4 paper). I was trying out a range of stitches so I've got raised satin stitch on the scales, French knots on the head, stem stitch on the tail and split stitch on the large fin. I'd been trying to make things with variegated thread for a while, but this was the first one I was really happy with. It's on a large piece of batik which gets darker towards the foot of the piece. Unfortunately it didn't photograph well. I'll add a picture below of a failure of a dragon (based on this), and the goldfish (based on this) whichI was told didn't look enough like a goldfish, which was what made me determined to make a koi which would look recognisably fish-like. Both of them were fairly small, so although I was annoyed with my failures, I didn't waste too much time or thread on them. And, as always with the failures, I did learn some things from the process of making them (e.g. with the goldfish bowl, I learned that trying to embroider on stretchy T-shirt material is a bad idea unless you're looking to make life difficult for yourself).
