#focuscuttingsewalong April 2021 round up

 Hello everybody!

Another month has gone by, and I am still managing to stick to this sewalong, so yay! I even managed two blocks most weeks. The theme this month was Gardens, and despite the Easter snow, I have actually managed to be outside in mine this month, so I have lots of lovely natural light photos, instead of my yellow light/weird phone shadow pics that I end up taking over the winter.

The first prompt was identifiable motifs. I made two blocks for this one.

The first one is an Aldi fabric, that came as part of a bundle which I actually bought for the other fabrics in it. But I very much believe in working with what I've got, and it made a lovely flower garden block.

The second one is a Lewis and Irene fabric called 'Grandma's Garden'. I bought this one when I needed more purples for my Rainbow Hexies quilt (pic in my February post). 

It felt particularly apt the week I made it, as my mother (who is Grandma to my kids) had been posting lovely pictures of the birds in her own garden, including this sparrowhawk (who, true to its name, came to eat a sparrow on the bird table). Picture credit I believe goes to my Dad, Peter Higgins.

The second prompt was sections. Again, I made two blocks.

For the first one, I did sections from a grasshopper fabric.

I don't normally get a lot of excuse to use my buggy fabrics, but they definitely fit into the theme of gardens. I really struggled with the central fabric in this first one, as everything I auditioned seemed too busy. The single large motif with a black background that I eventually went for was easily the best choice, calming down the more angular grasshopper sections.

And as a bonus, I realised I haven't shared this block with you yet - my June block for the 2020 #focuscuttingsewalong!

The theme for this one was 'Freestyle - half way through'. This one I actually made and photographed at the start of March. It uses the same buggy fabric as above, but I decided to lean into the angular lines for the second fabric. I have quite a few creepy-crawly fabrics, and they rarely fit into the themes, so I used it here for the freestyle. I was quite glad this year to have a proper theme to put them in.

Back to this year's blocks, I was browsing the hashtag on Insta and I realised I did actually have a large enough floral print for sections in my stash, so I made this one.

The fabric is from a Kaffe Fasset 10-inch charm pack that I won in a giveaway. As I only have ten inch squares, I didn't have enough copies of one motif in one colourway, so I mixed two together. Here's the fabric squares before I cut into them.

I have used fabrics from this bundle before in my 2020 blocks as well - you can see it here.

The third prompt was pattern matching. Again, I made 2 blocks.

I really struggled to find a suitable fabric for pattern matching in my stash, I found this - which I believe comes from my mother's stash - in a box where I keep larger prints separate from the rest of my stash.

I thought it looked like windows into lots of little gardens. I had hoped that by centering the middle hexie on the line between two squares, that two whole squares would fit horizontally in the block. That didn't quite work as well as I would have liked, but I am really pleased with the pattern matching job I have done here.

The second block I made features insects again, but a little prettier this time.

I had butterflies on my brain after a trip out to the gorgeous Moseley Bog in Birmingham, where I took this picture.

I struggled for a good central hexie for this block. Anything too similar in colour looked washed-out so I went to the opposite side of the colour wheel and checked out my purples. I was really happy when I realised I could actually fit one of these fairies in the centre. I love these Michael Miller fairies, they are based on Cicely Mary Barker's illustrations. I have small pieces (fat quarter or less) of three different colourways - purple, pink and blue. Annoyingly, the fairies are slightly too big to fit into the size of fussy cutting I normally do - which is about a 3-inch square. Fairies at the bottom of the garden definitely fit the theme for this month, though.

The final week was freestyle, but still on the gardens theme. Inspired by the 'set the scene' images we did last month, I chose to make a garden scene.

This is supposed to be the sort of gardens you get at stately homes, with a lake (+ frogs!) and lots of trees. I am very happy with this little block.

So that's April done! The theme for May is 'Senses' - one week for each of sound, smell, sight, taste and touch.  It's not a theme I've done before, so it will be interesting to see what everyone does with it.

Thanks for reading!

Linking up with The Peacock Party and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop!