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.

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.

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.