#focuscuttingsewalong May 2021 roundup

 Hello everybody!

Another month of actually managing to keep on top of this sewalong.  This was a 5-week month and the theme was 'The Senses' with each week representing one of sound, smell, sight, taste and touch. I completed 7 blocks this week.

The first week was Sound. I made two blocks.

The first block is a silly one, using an animal sounds fabric from my stash.  For the centre, I used a cute pic of two of the animals who make the sounds.

The second one was slightly more serious, some musical instruments - the one I play, the violin, is at the top - and a centre with the name of my favourite baroque composer, Vivaldi. 

I love his Four Seasons, and previously used this fabric in the 2018 sewalong for the theme of Autumn. Here it that block sewn in to my Fussy Cutting Forest quilt.

On to smell week.  This one was really difficult for me. The basic problem is, my sense of smell is pretty rubbish, even when my nose isn't totally congested by hayfever. It's not that I can't smell anything, it's that everything seems to be dialled down compared to everyone else and I can't distinguish many different smells from each other. So, roses just smell like generic flowers, I really have no idea what is meant to be so special about the smell. Lavender is about the only flower I can recognise from smell alone. And spicy food is absolutely wasted on me - the heat of the spice overwhelms the other tastes, and I don't even get any of the aromatic scents to enjoy.  This being the case, almost none of the images in my fabrics remind me of any smells (I also have very few fabrics featuring people, so pics of noses were also not an option for me). What I can smell a bit better, is stuff I really dislike the smell and taste of. Like coffee. I hate the smell. I hate the taste even more, I literally cannot force myself to drink more than a couple of sips of it. But it is something I can smell, and I have a coffee fabric, so that's what I went with for my block.

Still, I am glad to have never had Covid, and to be fully vaccinated, as I would actually miss the total absence of this sense.

The third week was Sight. This was much easier, I have three fabrics featuring eyes, that I had pulled as soon as the theme was announced. I made two blocks for this week.

The first one is just all about eyes.

It features two of my favourite designers - the half hexies are a Tula Pink fabric from her De La Luna collection, and the centre hexie is a Libs Elliot fabric. Libs Elliot draws a lot of her inspiration from tattoos, and the lightning bolt in the centre of the eye is a signature motif of hers.

I bought the Tula Pink fabric as the first fabric for my Halloween La Passcaglia quilt, and it features as the centre of the first rosette I started making. You can see it in my post here.

The second block is about sightseeing.

It's mostly an excuse to use the green camera fabric. Initially for the centre, I was going to use a Tula Pink cat's eyes fabric, but once I had it cut out, I didn't really feel like it worked together.  I let it sit for a day, before I remembered the grey monuments fabric (previously seen here as the Statue of Liberty). This works a lot better, both colourwise and thematically.

The fourth week was taste. I did one block.

Despite my poor sense of smell, there are many tastes I do enjoy, but my long time favourite is strawberries. Strawberry is my default choice of flavour for pretty much everything. And I happened to spot a fat quarter bundle with a strawberry fabric in Aldi on the Monday of the week I needed to make this, so that was perfect (and as a bonus, it's recycled cotton!).

For the outer half-hexies, I alternated how I cut out the motif, to try and provide a sense of movement to the block. I am not really convinced it makes any difference, but I do like the final block.

The centre hexie is a strawberry fabric I already had in my stash. It also features as the centre of this block in my Fussy Cutting Forest quilt, which happens to be the one I am currently quilting (yes, progress is slowly happening on this quilt!).

And the final week was Touch. I knew from the start that I would want to make a tactile block, steering away from my usual patchwork cottons. This is the block I made.

The fluorescent orange is stretch lace. I am making myself a bridesmaid's dress for my sister's wedding in July (the first dress I have ever made - exciting! You'll get a proper post on that further along in the process), and her colour scheme is orange, inspired by California poppies. I am putting a lace overlay on the bodice, and I ordered some samples of different shades of orange lace. Well this colour was clearly not going to work, it's a bright day-glo safety jacket orange. But there is no sense in throwing out good fabric, even a sample strip, so here it is, with focus-cut roses, in my block. The fabric underneath it is a plain white cotton fabric. I feel that maybe I should have gone with a slightly duller shade, like a cream as it very much enhances the overall brightness of the block.  The central hexie is a small square of green felt I had in my stash. The end result is a block that is interesting to touch, if not necessarily pleasing on the eye.

So that's May! The June theme is travel, which I think is going to be a pretty easy theme, as I already have a mental fabric pull for it. It should be fun!

Thanks for reading!

Linking up to The Peacock Party and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop