Small wall hanger, mug rug

The deplorable weather in Melbourne lately has been great for staying indoors stitching.  I have finished two items for friends over the past week.  They may see them here before they receive them, or they might not even realise they will be the recipient!  Anyway, the Halloween mug rug is part of an online forum swap.

I have had this cute dogs fabric for a while, just waiting for the right person to make it up into something.  I was given a surprise gift recently from someone who loves dogs, so I decided to use my doggie fabric to make her something in return.  It could be used as a coffee table centrepiece, or hung on a wall - she can decide what she wants to do with it.  If it looks a bit bumpy around the edges, that is because I still have to handsew the binding to the back.

I did some more work on my batik seascape, but the photo I've taken doesn't look much different to the previous picture I posted here, so I won't post the latest one.  I took a bit of a risk with the quilting.  I wanted to machine quilt wavy lines over the whole piece, and was thinking of using sparkly cotton which I know is available.  But I didn't have any quilting cotton of that kind, so I went to my cross stitch and embroidery cottons and found some Kreinek sparkling blue thread on a spool.  I threaded the machine, using ordinary cotton in the bobbin, and very slowly and carefully, quilted the wavy lines I wanted.  Turned out great!