March 2022 #focuscuttingsewalong

 Hello everybody!

Well, I didn't get my wish of a more concrete topic for this month. After a week celebrating International Women's Day, the main topic of the month was the International Day of Happiness. To be honest, I find Happiness as a topic not very dissimilar to the 'Things I Love' prompt from last month, but I have tried my best to differentiate my blocks. I made 7 blocks in total for this month.

Week 9 was freestyle blocks for International Women's Day, and I made two blocks for this prompt.

The first block needs some explaining.

This block is in honour of my great-grandmother, born Margaret Reid Shackleton.

This woman taught Geography at Cambridge University, so the mountains in the block represent her subject. She published her book 'Europe - A Regional Geography' in 1934. She continued to teach after marrying my great-grandfather, FG Mann, and indeed after having her two daughters. I think she is a pretty cool, trail-blazing woman to commemorate on this day.

The second block is for a fictional woman, Rey Skywalker, from the Star Wars films.

Rey is the main character in the sequel trilogy of the Star Wars film franchise (Episodes VII-IX). For many people, and especially many young girls and women, it has been inspiring to see a woman take up the mantle of the Jedi. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to talk publicly on the internet about how inspiring this character is without being met with a backlash of hatred. In its milder form, this comes out as irrelevant, unsolicited opinions, but these can very quickly escalate to rape and death threats. Until people stop behaving like this, we still need International Women's Day.

Week 10 was on to the main theme of the month, International Day of Happiness. The prompt was identifiable motifs. I made three blocks for this week.

For the first two blocks, I took the idea of Happiness quite literally, and used these happy, smiley monsters.

These fabrics are from a Craft Cotton Co fabric bundle I was given for Christmas a couple of years ago (possibly by my Mum?). The yellow monsters saying hello featured at the start of last year's sewalong, as you can see in this post.

For the third block, I decided rainbows made me happy. They are also the shape of a smile when upside-down, so that's how I arranged them.

Week 11 had the prompt of obscure motifs. I made 1 block for this week.

Bright coloured tropical fish make me happy, so I used the last usable motifs I had of this fabric. You can also see pictured a pincushion I made from a similar fabric. I actually made that in my teens, when I went to a monthly Young Textile Group meeting.

Using this reminded me that I had unfinished block for the 2020 sewalong using the same fabric. So I finally got around to adding the corner squares to that block, and here is my bright, cheery, supersized block for the 2020 October theme of Look Down. 

And lastly, Week 12 was pattern matching. Again, I just made the 1 block for this week.

It's Grogu! Also known as The Child, or Baby Yoda. From the Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian. Because he is so adorably cute, he always makes me happy. And finding some licensed fabric of him in Aldi a couple of weeks ago made me happy too.

So that's March finished! The theme for April is Botanicals, which is a lot more concrete as a theme, and quite different from what we've just had, so I am happy with that.

Thanks for reading!