The rat is about 7cm from its nose to the side of its back. I was testing out the effect of working with strands of two different colours at the same time. I think it makes it much less noticeable that this is mostly split-stitch (the same as the rabbit). I ended up making it into a stuffed decoration and clearly, while I can embroider, I'm really bad at sewing shapes out of fabric. The next thing I made also involved some strange sewing decisions, but as they were preceded by some unfortunate embroidery outcomes, I'm not sure which type of stitching I was worse at on that occasion.

I made this thinking it could be a contribution to a charity auction so I made it small because I was trying to work fast, but I wasn't fast enough and the listings filled up and it was probably for the best since the postage would probably have cost more than anyone would bid on it. Anyway, it's a 4" hoop but as I discovered, small is not necessarily easier because you tend to end up making the stitches smaller too, and this also involved quite a lot of sewing with just one strand of embroidery floss.

This is another large piece, with the rabbit about as long as a sheet of A4 paper (since that's the size of the sheets of tracing paper I had). The hoop is 14" and I didn't embroider the rabbit inside that. The fabric is Makower Village Life - Grass. The rabbit is based on a photo I saw online. I checked some other photos to make sure I remembered the details of what daisies and dandelions looked like. I'm including a close-up of the dandelion, which is about 3.5cm high.

I'd made a few earlier attempts at hedgehogs and they hadn't worked, so I was really happy this one did. It's in an 8" hoop and was inspired by a road traffic symbol for hedgehogs crossing the road. Below are the failed hedgehogs. The first one was supposed to be a camouflaged hedgehog, and it was, but it was a bit too camouflaged and has a bulbous nose.

I was inspired by this and lots of photos I saw online of harvest mice. I used variegated thread for the wheat and used two layers of stitching on the mouse's body to try to create the impression of an undercoat of fur (not sure if that worked). It's a 8" hoop, and the fabric used was Makower Spraytime “Grass.”

These are based on a design made for Royal Crown Derby's porcelain birds. They're in an 8" hoop and I liked seeing how I could create lines just by how I aligned the edges of blocks of stitches, instead of sewing an outline. I also liked how the birds fit the berry bush print of the batik fabric.

This is in an 8 inch hoop. Again, I was using batik fabric and because it was so dark, I had to use tracing/transfer paper to get the design on to it. My inspiration was the cover of Telling the Bees (see below) but I used a variety of sources to try to get the sunflower the way I wanted it, and even so I think I could have done better with the petals. Still, I was happy with the bee and the centre of the flower, which is partly why, much later in the year, I made another bee.

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.

I made this for Kirsti, to celebrate the publication of her novel, The Knitting Station. It came out from Rymour Books in 2021 and my embroidery's the same size as the cover because I traced it to get the design. Because of the size, I felt some elements of the cover would just be beyond my capabilities so I chose a grey batik background to fill in the spaces for both the sea and sky. I think it still looks quite similar to the cover, but you can decide for yourself.

I made a few small creatures in 4" hoops (small enough to stitch each in a day) because I wanted to try out a variety of stitches on some batik fabric I'd bought. I based them on drawings I found online. Here's one of the others: