What has needlepoint to do with singing? More than you might think. Singers spend much of their time travelling and waiting. Needlepoint, which can be taken up and put down again in seconds, is the ideal activity with which to occupy those wasted periods. It's better than books because one's brain can, to some extent, be elsewhere, especially when you are simply filling in blocks of background colour. Joan Sutherland always had a petit point on the go in her dressing room or while waiting in the wings. Cushion covers are the ideal size. But yesterday, I hung up this needlepoint peacock I stitched in the 1990s. It was previously in my London house, in a dark stairwell deprived of natural light, but it looks much better on our landing here, next to our 1930s oak staircase against a white wall by a north-facing window.

The book from which the design was taken is Beth Russell's William Morris Needlepoint. I saw it in a shop and knew immediately that I had to make the cover design if nothing else. This was long before the days of websites and online shopping, and I recall the difficulties I had in obtaining the wool. None of my local stockists in London ? not even John Lewis ? had Appleton wool and I had to make do with Anchor wool. There was one colour I wasn't convinced about. The rims around the peacocks' "eyes" seemed wrong to me. A trip to Holland Park confirmed my impression that the rims seem to glow around the edges, like flames, though the exact colour of something as iridescent as a peacock's feather can be difficult to determine when the colour varies to such an extent according to the light and the viewing angle. But I wanted my peacock's tail to glisten more and to stand out from its surrounding foliage, so I chose a golden yellow for the rims instead of Beth Russell's recommended turquoise and jade colours.

Anchor's shades were fine for most of the design but were useless for the vibrant blue of the peacock's head and neck. None of the Anchor shades came anywhere close to what was required. Eventually I found an Appleton stockist, and I was able to complete the bird's head. I used industrial quantities of wool. The design uses more than seventy-seven thousand stitches. I used a wide-gauged canvas which needed a double thickness of wool to fill its large holes. I always employ cross-stitch for all my needlepoint, as it gives better coverage and stability. It takes twice as long to work as conventional tent stitch and uses much more wool, but it is well worth the extra effort and expense because the piece does not have to be worked on a frame, needs less stretching once finished, and will not go out of shape over time. It is always sad to see antique pieces of needlepoint that have become distorted and skewed. My finished piece (excluding the dark blue fabric onto which it is sewn) measures 97 cm x 139 cm. It is more orthogonal in reality that it looks in my camera picture, which I had to take at a slight angle to fit the whole image in the lens.

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