August #focuscuttingsewalong roundup

 Hello everybody!

This will only be a short post, as I only did three blocks for this month.  It was only a 3-week month in the sewalong's calendar, and having the kids off school affords me very little spare time for sewing, so I didn't do any extras. Here are my three blocks.

The theme was Human, which I found quite hard with my stash, as I don't have a lot of fabric featuring humans. Week 1 was identifiable motifs. Here is my block.

Little cowboys. I got really stumped for what to put in the middle of this, I ended up asking for suggestions on Instagram. I got several suggestions for bandanas (I don't have any bandana fabric) and a couple for cows or horses (the few I do have don't work well) but otherwise people suggested solids. I ended up going for this spotty orangey-yellow to evoke the colour of wheat, based on one suggestion I received.

The second week was obscure motifs. This was very difficult to find an appropriate fabric for, I ended up settling on this.

Which is Batgirl's legs. A fictional human inspired by a flying rodent is probably pushing the definition of human a little bit, but she is more human than the Kryptonian and Amazon who appear on the same fabric. 

Which is the problem with the more human-looking figures in my stash, a lot of them are not actually humans. Elves, fairies, wizards, humanoid aliens, hobbits, dwarves, no problems. Former humans such as ghosts and skeletons are also well-represented thanks to my Hallowe'en La Passacaglia quilt. But actual humans, not so much.

The final week was pattern matching. This is the only fabric I actually had in mind straight away when I saw the theme for this month.

The prima ballerina is from a fabric that was given to me for use in my rainbow hexies quilt. Unfortunately, the motifs are actually too large for a single 1.5 inch hexie, and any focus on the rainbow colours in the dresses would end up cutting off the ballerinas' heads, so it didn't end up getting used in that. However, it works really nicely here, and I was happy to be able to just squeeze in the heart at the top of the central hexie. The chorus girls  filling in the remaining half-hexies are from a fat quarter pack I won in a giveaway in either the 2018 or 2019 #focuscuttingsewalong (then called the #fussycuttingsewalong).

So that's August done. The theme for September is Memories, and I am already running behind, but I expect to get caught up once the kids are properly back at school. I am not feeling particularly inspired by this theme, it's too abstract and personal for my tastes, so I will probably only do the minimum blocks again. Maybe I'll get into it as it gets going.

Thanks for reading!