I’ve had the needle and thread out again; as my first hobby horse approaches completion I have started work on this plush alternative which is more in keeping with hobby horses as children’s toys.

Rather than draw out a lovely pattern to make this head I opted for a patchwork affair which really was a lot more difficult than I had imagined. The intended outcome was to produce something that was more akin to a Frankenstein’s monster type creation with asymmetrical seams and the stitches on display rather than an idealised vision of a unicorn.

There’s a long way to go but I’m quite happy with the progress so far.

Over the Christmas week I got to work on a new piece of work. It’s my most ambitious embroidery to date; at least in terms of scale. I completed these two hand embroidered Celtic knotted circles over the course of the last couple of days and I’m now in the progress of marking out the rest of the fabric.

I found some inspiration at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh last week. They currently have an extraordinary exhibition of Indian and South East Asian textiles on display called Heirlooms. The works that have turned my head to embroidery were a number of hand embroidered Kantha. Kantha are hand embroidered quilts generally of Bengali origin.

I’ve been sitting on my Bestial Drawings for a little while now, slightly unsure as to how to take the work forward. Creating my own Kantha from these drawings seems quite fitting. Traditional Kantha often told stories through the images that were embroidered onto them and similarly the animals that are pictured in my series of drawings are taken from the pages of Welsh mythology.

Having never attempted an embroidery before I thought it would be best to start with a small sampler. The pictured image is of a a design embroidered onto a small piece of fabric approximately 25cm square. Having transferred my drawing onto the fabric using carbon paper I’ve used basic black cotton thread and a split stitch which seems to work quite well.

Bearing in mind that the final piece that I’m aiming to create is essentially a quilt, I’ve used a thermal lined cotton fabric which is actuallly lovely to work with as it doesn’t fray.