Apríl 2023 #focuscuttingsewalong roundup

Hello everybody!

Before I start on my blocks for April, I want to say that I know full well that I haven't rounded up February or March yet. I'm sorry. It's because I haven't done all the blocks for February or March yet. I will do the roundup post either when I have caught up the month, or at the end of year I will round up the unfinished months like I did a couple of years ago. But I have still been busy sewing, just mostly working on other exciting things - that I fully intend to blog about soon!

But anyway, April! After a one week special for Easter/Spring, the theme this month has been Plants and Flowers. I have done 5 blocks for April, and here they are.

Week 13 coincided with Easter celebrations, so we had a special freestyle week on that theme. I made one block.

Some cute Easter bunnies!

Week 14 was the start of our Plants and Flowers theme. This is a real favourite of our host, Naomi, and floral fabrics are completely unavoidable, so we always get a lot of variety from the community in the blocks for this theme. The first prompt was identifiable motifs. I made 2 blocks.

First up, these potted plants.

I had this fabric picked out for the theme as soon as it was announced. I was happy it worked well with the size of template I'm using.

Secondly, these Christmassy white on pink flowers.

For this one I was playing with the patterns created by cutting out the same group of 4 flowers four times. I like the circle effect around the centre

Week 15 was sections. When we work with this theme, Naomi doesn't require obscure sections, because when you put sections of flowers together they tend to still look like a flower. The challenge was to still create a different pattern than the original fabric. I made one block.

This is a Tula Pink De La Luna fabric that I have left over from my Halloween La Passacaglia quilt. I really like all the different patterns created by this, especially the stalk.

For this one, I considered stitching the pieces the other way around, for the square effect in the middle.

It also looked good before basting the paper pieces.

I am really happy with the finished result, though.

And finally Week 16 was pattern matching. Again I made one block, using my Halloween/Day of the Dead fabric.

This is an Alexander Henry fabric. My favourite bit of this block is the skull peeking out from behind the rose on the left.

So that was April! May's theme is Pink, so it will definitely feature less spooky fabrics. I had hoped the colour would be Yellow, because I want to do a rainbow effect with the finished quilt, and the first two colour features have been Red and Orange. And I have an idea of how I am going to piece it together with filler pieces. I can still go with my basic plan, but I may have to wait to see how it develops a bit before I start piecing it together and make decisions about sizing.

In the meantime, I will leave you with a few pics of these flower blocks among the flowers in my front garden.

Thanks for reading!