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January - March #focuscuttingsewalong roundup

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Hello everybody! Well clearly I've not made a good start of actually keeping on top of this blog month-by-month this year. Last year I was working on the basis that I couldn't write my monthly blog post until I had finished all the prompts for that month. This left me in the patently absurd situation of writing round-ups for months early in the year very late in the year, and still have some months trailing into 2024. I started this year on the same principle, but now having got to the end of March, without having completed any of the months, I'm calling a halt to this ridiculous system. It's not making me happy, or encouraging me to actually stay on top of the sewalong, it's just giving me another excuse to procrastinate. Instead I will just round up at the end of each month with as much, or as a little, as I have completed in the month, plus any stragglers from previous months going forward. So this is my round-up for the first quarter of 2024. Here are my all of
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December #focuscuttingsewalong roundup

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 Hello everybody! The new year has started, as has the new shape for Naomi's sewalong (which I am doing again), but I am still trying hard to catch up everything from 2023. I have a quilt top that is starting to shape up, and I would really like to get it all stitched together, so I need to finish off the missing pieces. I have finished all the December prompts now, on the theme of Christmas/Winter, so here are my 6 blocks for that month. Even if they are now out of season. Because I am actively trying to fill in certain colour gaps in my plan, and not make the quilt tops any bigger, I was quite limited in which colours I could use for these blocks. In particular, I couldn't make any more green blocks, and ruling out green in a Christmas theme is tricky! And they don't make Christmas fabrics in orange or yellow, which are the colours I do still need more of. Week 49 was identifiable motifs. I made two blocks for this week, First up, these llamas. I made these mainly to put
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EPP Christmas Ornaments Workshop

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Hello everybody! Last weekend I went to a short workshop making EPP Christmas ornaments, here in my current home city of Coventry. We were at St-Martin's-In-The-Field Church, which was a very nice venue, providing excellent tea and cake in the café. We were in a heated marquee due to building work, but I really didn't find it that cold (note: I was the only one with this opinion. None of my fellow classmates took off their coat like I did). Our tutor was Jane Cobbett, a local textile artist, collector and quilt restorer. She started by giving us a talk on how the Victorians used to make Christmas decorations using fabric scraps, often selling them to raise money for good causes. She brought in this lovely late Victorian Moravian star from her collection (maker unknown). Isn't it lovely? A lot of the fabrics are silks, and you can make out some brocade designs. The beads are held in place by pins. Jane also showed us this version of the same pattern she made herself. Then we
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