Weekly update: the stash report, what a gift!, and OMG August

This little bunny scampered across the street during my early evening walk on Friday.   I was two blocks from home when this happened so I'm confident he was not going to plunder my garden.  The encounter was right in time for "Rabbit, rabbit!" on August 1.  (Here is the explanation of the superstition.)

Stash report for July:
 Fabric IN:  280-3/8 yards for $197, average 70 cents per yard
Fabric OUT:  101 yards

YTD fabric IN:  686-1/4, $865, $1.26/yard
YTD fabric OUT:  622-1/8
Net GAIN: 64-1/8

I was doing really well with stash reduction -- but on Wednesday my AAUW friend Paula P. called me. "I'm downsizing," she said. "Would you like some fabric?"  She lives on the far north side of Chicago so we compromised and met in the parking lot at Old Orchard shopping center in Skokie.  That 30-mile drive was the farthest I've been from home since early June.  We recognized one another despite masks and sunglasses.  The handoff took ten minutes.

The five bags were neatly packed.

The fabric weighed 55 lbs so that's 220 yards.
From the way it was folded I could tell that a lot of it came from Vogue Fabrics in Evanston. They are known for fabulous fashion fabric, but in recent years their remnant section has a huge assortment of quilting fabrics.

Nearly half was batik including some really interesting Indian prints and some 3- to 4-yard pieces.

There were some oldies.

The ad is the back cover of a 1980 issue of Quilt World. (I've been going through a milk crate of Quilt Worlds from that time frame.)  The pink print was one of the Friday acquisitions.

I wish RJR would reissue the Jinny Beyer blenders of the late 1990's.   I think they'd be extremely successful.  (These are FQs.)

This 4-1/2 yard piece was fun.   Yours Truly is Marti Michell's company.  I used her "Quilting for People Who Don't Have Time to Quilt" books when I was a newbie.

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I assembled the random HST geese.  I  had enough HSTs to make almost all the blocks -- just 8 HST short. It was easy to make a few more.

It's 60 x 72 and used 5-1/8 yards.

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It's time to declare my One Monthly Goal for August. Easy:  make three wall hangings -- two for the past co-presidents of the Zion Woman's Club and one for my partner in the 2020 Teal Mini Swap hosted by Beth Helfter.   I've got one wall hanging all pieced (see Friday's post).

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I finished two books this week.
Detective in the Dooryard is a compilation of Facebook posts by Tim Cotton of the Bangor, Maine, Police Department. He is the FB voice of the department and the BPD page has thousands of followers.   In this time of "defund the police" Tim provides ample evidence that many/most police departments do indeed "preserve and protect" to make our communities safe. His tales also show how officers serve other roles--like being social workers.

 The Kidnap Years is about the kidnapping spree of the 1930's. The Lindbergh case was the most high profile and the forensic investigation set a new standard for expertise.  But at the same time more than a few lawyers, doctors, and industrialists, and children, too, were kidnapped by amateur crooks as well as notorious criminals.  J. Edgar Hoover's FBI proved its worth (well, to Hoover) with their interstate searches. 
            A couple of years ago I toured the Cuneo Mansion in Libertyville, The docent pointed out the barred windows in the bedroom wing, saying they were not to keep people in but to keep kidnappers out.  Now I understand the Cuneo family's fears.

Linking up with One Monthly Goal
Oh, Scrap!
  Monday Making
Design Wall Monday

P.S.  A heron preceded me when I walked at Illinois Beach State Park early in the week.  The lakefront was closed this weekend because the beaches have gotten too crowded for good social distancing.