Focus cutting sewalong 2026 month 2 roundup

 Hello everybody!

Another four-week block in this year's #focuscuttingsewalong has come to an end. The colour theme for this month was Yellow. It's not the biggest colour area in my stash and I did run into a few issues, as we shall see. But I did succeed in making 9 blocks in total.

Week 5 was Identifiable Motifs. I made 2 blocks for this week. I had a definite Disney theme going on here.

First up, Mickey.

This is actually taken from a fabric that has Mickey on four different coloured backgrounds, but as is the whole point of focus cutting, I just took out the yellow ones to make this block.

Secondly, Simba,

This is not the only Lion King fabric that is going to feature in this month's round-up, my supply of yellows being somewhat limited. I like the circle effect that the faces make.

Week 6 was obscure sections. I struggled a bit this week. I made two blocks with highly differing levels of obscurity.

First up, another Lion King fabric:

Look there's a cool greeny-blue square! And a brown cross! Focus on those shapes and let them distract you from the fact that these are very, very obviously trees. They are not even slightly obscure and really, this block belongs in the previous week's identifiable motifs category. Oh, well. Here's what the original fabric looked like, you couldn't have extrapolated the full design from just this section.

Secondly, some actual obscurity:

I don't think you would know what this was if you weren't familiar with the fabric. My husband managed to accurately work out that it was from one of my superhero fabrics but couldn't tell which superhero. It's the Hulk. I think it not being his proper colour helps with the obscurity here. Here's the section I took from the original fabric.

Week 7 was pattern matching. I made one unmitigated disaster of a block.

I was trying to do a pattern match with two identical motifs of two different colours. And it looked OK when I had it cut out. But I didn't sew it slowly, basting one square at a time the way I normally do. I rushed things, and the result is - well what even is that? Not a pattern match. It's not obscure sections, because it looks like a messy version of the original motif with a random blue bit. And it's not really identifiable motifs, because the motif isn't repeated across the four squares and it's not that identifiable seeing as it's just a splatty circle thing. I guess it counts as freestyle. Once it's in the finished quilt (whenever that happens...) I'll pretend that's what it was all along. Part of what was disappointing is that I've previously enjoyed working with this fabric. You can see a block I made here in the 2019 sewalong where I combined the blue sprays with yellow lines.

And finally, week 8 was freestyle. I made three blocks.

First up, Van Gogh sunflowers.

I am quite happy with this block turned. I really like the circle effect from the flowers. I'm quite a big Van Gogh fan, as evidenced by this Lego set my husband got me for Christmas (also I get the Don McLean song stuck in my head every time I look at it, so now you have to have that too).

Next up, some classic stripes.

Stripes or lines were made for freestyle week. This type is what Naomi use to line 'in the round'. They are fun to do, and they always look good.

And lastly, these bright block with diamond shapes.

This block feels very similar to one I made in the 2023 sewalong - you can see it in the yellow row of my finished Focussed Rainbow quilt. This one was quite fun to play around with the possibilities, even before I basted so I could see the effects of what bigger square could have made. Here are some of the others blocks I could have made with this fabric.

So all in all, a very mixed bag! For the next four-week block, our colour theme is Orange. Again, this is not a colour I have an overabundance of in my stash, and I will be having to rely quite heavily on my Halloween fabrics. Expect a lot of cats and spiders.

Thanks for reading!