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:

I bought three kits to work in an 8 inch hoop, all with flower designs on dark green backgrounds. I completed them more or less according to the patterns, only making a few tiny changes to make one of the flowers/its stem look a bit more realistic/to add in stems missing from the pattern so that they’d extend down to the base as with the other stems. I learned chain stitch. I also saw that massed French knots make a nice effect for the centre of daisies.

This is a set of three 6" hoops. With the Y I had planned to make the whole letter and surrounding as in the original but since I didn’t know how to use tracing paper, I tried tacking the paper to the cloth to create the outlines. This made a mess of the stitches when I pulled it off and tugged at the cloth, leaving marks. So, I used the stitches to guide a thread which I then completely overlayed (couched style) with more thread, so that everything looked tidy. I then had the outline of the Y.