Two wall hangings.

In my previous post, I wrote about buying patterns that I later regretted, because they looked too complicated for me!  But with the help of Leanne at The Quilt Shop in Eltham, I have been able to achieve so much that I wouldn't have tried on my own.  I bought these two patterns at a suburban quilt shop a few years ago, thinking they would be quite easy to do - "Two Fabric Applique" patterns by the Pacific Rim Quilt company.

They look quite small, don't they?  When I opened the pack, I discovered that the actual size is 24"x 36" - which is clearly shown on the packet, but I didn't think too much about it when I saw that.  It is only when I had to transfer the pattern onto two pieces of fabric that I started to wonder if I'd taken on too much..  Once the pattern has been traced onto the fabrics, one fabric is laid over the other, and the pattern is cut away to reveal the fabric underneath.  I have done this technique once or twice, but on a MUCH smaller scale!  However, after seeing the finished project on display elsewhere, I felt I had to have a go, and with Leanne's help, this is what I achieved last night at her class:

The dark fabric is fused (with fusible webbing) to the light fabric, and next job is to stitch around all the edges.  I'm not going to hand stitch it - that would take me forever, so I'll be machine stitching it.  Then the backing and quilting.  So quite a bit of work still to be done, but I am very pleased to have got this far!  I would liked to have been able to use a pink, blue and yellow fabric like the original pattern photo, but I couldn't find anything like it, so I settled for this cloudy blue, which is prettier than what it looks here.

And, to end the week, I finally finished the batik Seascape I have been messing around with for some time.   Once I finished the backing and binding, I added a few embellishments such as a little white plastic seahorse brooch up near the mermaid, added sequins on the mermaid's body, sewed some shells on the sand, and an orange Xmas star that looks enough like a starfish for me to add!