Witches and Castles - Crafted Appliqué Magic

I'm a member of the Irish Patchwork Society, which is going to have its AGM in early October. The challenge for the meeting has the topic "Witches and Castles" and a size limit of 15''.  So, the way my brain works (do as you're told) I squeezed both witches and a castle into 15 inches and here they are:

UPD: You can check out the other challenge quilts (including the winner!) in this post. I'm also linking this post to the Handmade Halloween linky party hosted by Bernie @Needle and Foot. Make sure you visit it for Halloween inspiration!

I played with several variants of the scene, basically Little Witch + Cat, Big Witch + Cat and Little Witch + Big Witch

My husband chose the two witches variant, but I found a way to sneak a cat into the picture, as he brings a feeling of Drama (or should I say Doom?) with him - because you know what's going to happen next, right?

Another source of inspiration for me was our last year's Halloween window display (for which I found inspiration somewhere on Pinterest):

My idea called for intricate detailing to make the silhouettes look interesting and I knew I had to master the Crafted Appliqué technique for that. I had heard a lot of buzz in the quilting blogland about it and finally got to try it myself. You can see my rehearsal piece here. Fortunately, this idea meant that only one piece of fabric had to be treated, so that wasn't a problem (incidentally, the two fat quarters for this project were bought in Limerick, as well as the backing fabric).

You can see that the method worked - the edges are crisp, although I stitched quite close to the edge.

The busy detailing in the bottom half left the upper right corner rather empty, so I filled it with a ghost...If you didn't see it immediately, it's OK, that's often the thing with ghosts...

It twinkles mysteriously, being quilted with gold metallic thread, and seems also to be up to something mischievous... That left very little background free, so I did some quirky quilting to fill in the gaps.

I'm pleased with the result, as it has a kind of glow and a kind of mischief - season appropriate))) And I also consider my #BraveQuilter challenge and September OMG completed, so the post will be linked to these link-ups at the end of the month. It is also a New to Me in 2016 technique, so I'm linking to Celtic Thistle Stitches.

I couldn't wait till the end of the month to show it, so I'm also linking up to Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts and Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River )). Lara Buccella, the author of Crafted Appliqué book, also has a linky party on her blog for the projects made with her method, do check it for more inspiration!