I made quite a few mice this year, but I was particularly pleased with how I managed to contour such a tiny face, using layers of wadding on the surface before I began stitching (1-stranded cotton) "fur". The whiskers are stiff Gutterman linen thread.

The magpie is based on K. J. Charles' logo. I was experimenting with gold thread so I couched some rather badly, not least because it took me a while to work out how to do it continuously so that I didn’t have to cut the thread and bring it back up again. The bird is mostly 2-strand split stitch, but I used one-strand around the eye, and for the eye and beak, as they needed more precision. This was on organza, and I was experimenting with it, too. I also had a layer of wadding/batting under the bird and circle.

I saw a video by Sarah Homfray which suggested using woven picots for the petals of a sunflower (the fifth of the ideas, I think). I'd never tried this stitch before, so it seemed like an interesting challenge, particularly as I wanted to make the flower without a large fabric backing . This way, I could make two overlapping layers of woven picot petals. The flower is made in three layers. The smallest is the central circle of French knots.

I'd seen people make whipped/woven circles and I wondered if it would be possible to use the same technique on a different shape. You can judge for yourself how well it worked! The bodies of the bats are fleece, and the eyes are French knots of metallic thread.

As you can see from the difference in backgrounds for the fish in the first and second images, the fish was made entirely separately from the blue fabric and then sewn on later when it was time for me to add all the elements to my book. The fish is about 12cm long. I was trying out a number of new things with it. First of all I used appliqué over which I embroidered the scales of the body. The scales were done using couching, which is also fairly new to me.

This tiger is from Judith Kerr's The Tiger Who Came to Tea. He's trying to finish drinking all the water in the house, and the last of it's in this kettle (a metal button). I used tulle, various layers of padding and then embroidered on top (though the tail and topmost arm were mostly completed separately and then stitched on when they were ready). The face was embroidered with one-strand cotton thread, with the rest of the body in 2-strand.

I've seen quite a bit of science embroidery recently, particularly the project Edinburgh University ran to recreate drawings by "Spanish neuroscientist and pathologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal [...] famous for his beautiful, detailed, and accurate, illustrations of the histology of the central nervous system." This piece of embroidery I made is nowhere near as detailed or intricate, but it's still fairly accurate and I felt the French knots worked well to recreate the original.

I thought it would be nice to start 2022 with something small and sweet, so I used my favourite design from Pocurute Pocochiru's book of embroidery patterns, Peace, Love & Embroidery. I did adapt it somewhat, because I didn't use chain stitch and I left out some of the outlining. The original version of the hedgehog is on the cover of the book. It's only 7cm high and 6cm wide.

The next month I made another version which I simplified so it would be easier to make in a very small size on a handkerchief. It's only 4cm by 4cm and I embroidered it "in hand."

I made this over the three days of the UCU (University and College Union) strike action in December 2021, in an 8 inch hoop. I used the word "Strike!" from a 1918 war poster and tried to give the embroidery the feel of a vintage poster/banner, which is why I went for an allegorical snake, representing Unsafe Workload, Precarity, Inequality, Cuts and Intransigence, which is being attacked by the owl, claws extended, representing UCU.

The not-entirely successful landscape/seascape with seals embroidery that I mentioned underneath the entry for the rat was produced partly "in hand" (i.e. without using a hoop or frame). I'd wanted to try it again with this project because I thought it might help me avoid getting wrinkles in the fabric (that didn't work!) and also because if you're making something large, the hoop may at some point need to be placed on top of embroidery that's already been completed, and then it can squash it.