Focus cutting sewalong 2026 month 1 round-up

 Hello everybody!

Well it's been a while since I wrote anything here. Moving house completely took over my life last year. However, we are now all moved and starting to settle into our beautiful new home near Oxford.

So now that I have moved and unpacked my main fabric stash, I have joined back in with the #focuscuttingsewalong, hosted as ever by the lovely Naomi Clarke-Mordy. This year the shape is the square, and we are putting four small squares together to make one big square. I'm using 1.5 inch squares, because I have all the papers left over from making my Focussed Rainbow quilt in 2024. There's also a colour theme for the year - Naomi has divided the year into 13 lunar months with a different colour for each month. And we have now finished the first month, where the theme was White/Cream.

So here are my White/Cream focus cut blocks! I made 10 in total.

Week 1: Identifiable motifs.

I made 3 blocks in total. At this point in the process I hadn't unpacked most my fabric, so all I had to work with were my Halloween stash (which I had kept separate to work on my Halloween La Passacaglia during the move) and a few stragglers that I had missed when packing or acquired since packing. Fortunately Halloween and white work together.

First up, Boo!

I wanted something to say hello again to everyone on Insta, and this seemed much friendlier than some of the other fabric options (which included a set of gravestones - definitely not the way to send a friendly greeting). I chose to arrange them to create a kind of windmill effect. Also, it's a glow-in-the-dark fabric, which is cool.

Next up, pumpkins.

A classic Halloween motif, I had plenty of options to choose from here. This one seemed to fit nicely into the 1.5 inch squares I am using. 

And finally, snowflakes.

I really wanted to do something less Halloween-y for at least one block, so I searched my small collection until I found the fabric. And what could be more emblematic of white than snow?

Week 2 - obscure motifs.

I am normally spoiled for choice for this prompt, but this time I really struggled for fabrics that worked. I still managed two blocks.

First up this mostly white one.

This is actually made from small sections of the heads from this fabric.

They are cats! Another motif that features prominently in my Halloween collection, not least because there are plenty of cat fabrics that aren't technically part of a Halloween range available. I am very happy with this block.

The fun thing about sections, is you can play with different ideas by rotating the pieces before sewing them together. Here's how this block could have looked.

Second up, this pinwheel effect.

Admittedly, there is only a small amount of white in this block, but I really wanted to do some sections that weren't just grouped in the centre of the block. The original fabric with the section indicated is this:

And here's a couple of possibilities I considered for this block.

Week 3 - pattern matching.

Pattern matching is never my favourite, and particularly with squares, where cutting out a larger rectangle or square is not difficult, I struggle to see the necessity for it. I also struggle with fabrics for it, as you need a fabric with enough repeats, which I don't often have in a stash mainly made up of fat quarters. But one of the points of the sewalong is to hone a variety of skills, and more techniques is always useful to have. I made one block for this prompt.

More cats! And I did choose quite an easy one for the actual matching part, but even so, I am happy with the job I did on it.

Week 4 - freestyle.

Freestyle week is always fun, and for this week I had unpacked the rest of my stash from storage, so I largely used it as an opportunity to play with some different fabrics again. I made 4 blocks. Also, the weather cooperated for long enough for me to photograph them outside on my new lawn.

First, these art deco fans.

I love focus cutting with this fabric, it always gives great effects. You can see where I have used it previously here and here. It's a good one for freestyle week as well, because the pattern doesn't fit into the concept of identifiable motifs for me. I played with a couple of possibilities before sewing together the final design.

Next, the Child.

Having the rest of my fabrics out of storage means I have access to my geeky, licensed fabrics again, yay! This one is Grogu from the Mandalorian arranged four times to try to create a sort of four-leafed clover / club shape. Trying to create different shapes and effects is also part of the fun of this sewalong.

Third, these suns.

Because the theme for the month was white/cream, I wanted to make one block that was more cream than white, and this one seemed to jump out at me.

And lastly, some chess pieces.

Two Kings and two queens. Arranged to create an X shape. This is definitely an effect you will be seeing again in this sewalong because the squares really lend themselves to it.

So that was weeks 1-4! Our colour for weeks 5-8 is going to be Yellow, so I'm really glad I've unpacked my stash as I didn't have any yellow in the Halloween selection. But I now have this lovely rainbow of fabrics to choose from.

Let's see how I do this year with the sewalong, and with actually writing my blog. I am determined to do better, but I have said that before. Wish me luck!