Saturday, May 27, 2023

A Bibbie, Blogger Changes (Again), and Out and About

Making a Bibbie
For Christmas my granddaughter received an adorable little apron which her mom calls a bibbie.  It covers her front, meets at center back, and ties at the neck.   It is made of two layers of fabric quilted with thin batting between.  Before we visited a few weeks ago my daughter ask if I might be able to make another one, so I took along some large paper and traced a pattern.  It's a simple pattern but I'd never machine quilted and wasn't sure how it would go on my mom's old black 201 Singer. 

This week I spent several days making another, just as a trial to see if I could.  The fabric for both sides came from thrift clothing:  a woman's blouse, a skirt, and the back of a shirt for the binding.  Before layering and sewing I marked diagonal quilting lines at 1½" with a grey Crayola washable marker.  After layering I pinned the heck out of the layers, just to be sure there was no shifting.  And it worked just fine.  There were no puckers in the fabric.  Surprise!
It took hours and hours and I can see why the company who made her first bibbie went out of business.  There couldn't have been much profit when they sold them for $35.00!

The back is a plaid with similar colors to the fabric on the front.  I would have used a darker fabric had I had enough of one that worked with the colors on the front.
This is the finished bibbie.  My daughter liked it and Sophia was happy to wear it.  Somehow, it's not nearly as sweet as the little blue one which, I think, makes her look like she walked about of the 1940s.  If I make another, I'll buy fabric for it instead of using what I have on hand.
We drove down to my daughter's on Thursday, stayed overnight, then came home yesterday.  It was great to spend time with both our daughters, our grandchildren, and our son-in-law.  I don't have much energy today but I'm working on the bow tie quilt (which I'll post when it's done).

More Blogger Challenges
I do wish Blogger would leave well enough alone.  I've been getting emails from Google Analytics for several months telling me that Universal Analytics will be going away in July and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will become the default data collection tool.  I'd been putting off checking into it because, well, who wants more changes, but finally decided to check into it a week or so ago.  They suggest it's an easy change to set up but then they are tech savvy and I'm not.  They'd included the beginning of changes for this blog but not for my others.  And even their set-up wizard was not especially helpful.  What it seems to come down to is making a coding change.behind the scenes where all the coding for your whole blog is.  To a non-tech person like me it's scary stuff and just thinking about it makes me nervous.  What are you doing about this change to GA4?  (It's not that I love numbers per se, but I do like to see how many people have visited my blog, whether it's 12, 180, or however many.)

Out and About

We drove up to Malabar Farm a few weeks ago and toured the Big House. We had an excellent tour guide who casually added of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes information about Louis Bromfield and his family.  Below is about half the house and below that, the barn and other farm buildings.
The property is owned by Ohio's Department of Natural Resources which keeps the buildings and grounds in beautiful condition.  I loved the columbines!

There should be more to this post but my memory fails me just now....

I hope you have a great Memorial Day weekend, remembering those who gave their lives to help the United States of America keep the freedoms we have.

--Nancy.

13 comments:

  1. Well, you're way ahead of me, at least you received a notification from Google or Blogger about the changes. I haven't received any kind of notice and doubt I could make the kind of updates you're mentioning. So, if my blog disappears mysteriously you'll know what happened. That is a cute bibbie and your little granddaughter looks like she loves wearing them.

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    1. Hi, Pat.  Others have said they haven't received word of changes either, so maybe they're targeting a few blogs, or maybe they're going to be making the changes in stages.  I know it won't cause your blog to disappear, thank goodness!
      Thanks for the comment about the bibbie.  She very willing puts it on and wears it happily.  I'm so grateful she does!

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  2. The bibbie is really cute! The GA4 stuff is confusing. I watched some YouTube videos and followed one of them to the best of my ability. It seemed to be working. But now I got another email that said if I don't convert, it will do it for me. "Okay, fine!" is my response now. We'll see what happens. I don't think it's a Blogger thing, but a Google Analytics thing. So if you never set up your blog with Google Analytics, you probably won't have to worry about it. Good luck!

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    1. Thank you for the comment on the bibbie, Paulette, and especially for the information about the GA4 changes. I like the idea of an automatic conversion performed by Google! Maybe I will get an email like that, too. But, I'll check out the videos, as you did, and see what I can do on my own. I agree that it's probably a Google thing and not a Blogger thing. I've set up all my blogs with Google Analytics, which is why I'm confused about why they're only emailing me about one blog. Thanks again.

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  4. The Bibbie you made is so cute! But it does look like a LOT of work! And the little cutie wearing it is adorable.
    I have never heard of Google Analytics. I know the Blogger Dashboard has a page with stats, but I don't often think to look at it. Is that the same thing, or are you talking of something entirely different. I have received no emails about it. Maybe, as Paulette suggested, I never set up with them.
    That does look like an impressive farm, but the pretty columbines are what really caught my eye.

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    1. Thank you for the sweet comments about the bibbie and my granddaughter, Janet.  She is a toddler who is nearly always smiling or, at the very least, happily concentrating on what she's doing.
      I guess Google Analytics 4 will replace the stats on our dashboards but the stats won't be available from Blogger.  Google always seems to be pushing me to learn more technology!
      Malabar Farm was the home of Pulitzer Prize winner Louis Bromfield and the place where Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart married.  The columbines were gorgeous in person!

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  5. The bibbie is adorable and yours looks every bit as cute as the blue one. They are so handy! The house looks like a fascinating tour to take, and to imagine that people lived a life like that. Beautiful flowers, too. As for GA, I don't use google, but WordPress has analytics, too. I just look at them now and then, and don't set up anything they don't set up. I'll gladly code my own posting with html and CSS, to get things where *I* want them, but I'm not going deeper than that. =)

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    1. Thank you, Susan.  Both my daughter and granddaughter love the bibbie.  My daughter love that it protects her clothes and keeps her dry.  I'm not sure about wearing it in summer, though....
      Malabar Farm was a working farm owned by Louis Bromfield.  He often had guests, many from Hollywood, and they were expected to help with the farm work, too.
      Blogger does collect page views but will no longer when GA4 takes over.  It seems we'll have to go to a separate webpage if we want to look at our stats.  I guess my only interest is that I find it fun to see how many people have visited--4 or 14 or 140, etc.  I was thinking that you would do your own html.  I'm just have so little experience, I can imagine trying and having my blog look crazy!

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  6. The link I put in my comment was weird and too long. Then I lost the rest, oh well. Sorry.

    Bibbie is darling!

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    1. Thanks, Lizzy! How interesting to learn how things are done professionally. It sounds like a lot less work than doing everything at home by hand. I looked into pre-quilted fabric but didn't see any I thought would be good for a toddler.
      My daughter likes the bibbie because it covers most of my granddaughter's clothing, whatever she's wearing, so protects from food drips and drops, and also because it keeps her dry when playing in the water. My granddaughter seems to like the loose neck, and it doesn't interfere with her play. I think farm children have a tendency to get dirtier than city children.... They've tried the smaller bibs like the ones in the link you sent (which came through the email just fine) but haven't been satisfied. I think the bibbie will be too hot to wear in the summer because it has a thin layer of polyester batting, but they'll figure it out. There's enough growth room that it should still fit next fall and winter if they still want to use it.
      With the GA4 changes I think it will only affect the stats we see behind the scenes in Blogger -- how many visitors. I understand the numbers we see in Blogger will be gone or not keeping track any longer. I'm fairly certain it will not affect the blog itself and publishing posts. I'm not a great numbers person but I find it interesting to see how many people have visited in a day. Sometimes I think I'm just too old to deal with some of the technology that comes my way these days. (Dinosaur me. Haha.)

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  7. What a cute little design for the the bibbie. Your version is every bit as cute as the original. And what a sweet little face on your grandaughter.

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    1. Thank you, Robin.  Our granddaughter is usually smiling or, at the very least, contentedly doing whatever she's involved in.  I'd like to figure out a way to make the bibbie pattern simpler, in case my daughter wants another.  It was a little labor intensive, maybe partially because quilting fabric and sewing the binding on the seams was new to me. 

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