Bits and Pieces

 Or maybe odds and ends. Or just plain old miscellaneous stuff...

As predicted, it was HOT all week. I went through two boxes of frozen fruit bars (yummy and cold). Last night we had a thunder and lightning storm - scary. There were several lightning fires in my area. All were quickly put out. We also got a little bit of rain which helped.

I've never seen Bella hide from loud noises before. She came out after the thunder stopped.

This is not fog, it is smoke from the McKinney fire in California, just past the border. Per Cal Fire it has burned over 55K acres and is zero percent contained.  Sad and scary.

I did get a bit of sewing done.

I made lots of progress on my July UFO Challenge quilt. The pattern is called Four Patch Charm by Kathy Schwartz. It is a free pattern that can be found here. I like the pattern but the method she uses to create the blocks you end up with all bias edges. I have about 8 rows sewn together so far. It shouldn't take long to finish the top.

My August UFO Challenge project is last year's Project Linus mystery quilt Oliver in the Doghouse. Good timing since the new mystery will be starting the end of this month. I have over half of the quilt done so hopefully I can finish the top this month.

Do you use leader-enders? I've gotten so that I really like having a leader-ender project or two. I put the placemats together as a leader-ender.

I think this will be fun to quilt. Now I need to find a back for it.

I picked up a bunch of 1.5 inch squares at the guild last month and put these 4-patches together as leader-enders.

I'm going to continue using them as a leader-ender as I sash them with a narrow 1 inch strip of white. Unless I add a border, it should end up measuring 12 inches square.