Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Thrilled and not so thrilled


Saturday was Edinburgh Doors Open Day and Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law 1 took Grandson to the bus garage. They saw around it  and got a ride on a vintage bus. Grandson was very happy. He was even happier that the bus company was selling off old bus stops - or at least the signs from the tops of bus stops. Son-in-Law 1 bought one for him without realising that Nanny and Gramps from Worcester, who were visiting, had also bought one. So Grandson now has two (different) bus stop tops and he is thrilled.




He made signs for himself, to transform himself into buses of various numbers, and now conducts bus rides round the house, ideally with passengers.



He also created other bus stop signs to go along his routes. In this case he seems to have written some of the information backwards.


 We had Daughter 2 for the weekend and Son, Daughter-in-Law and Baby Granddaughter M for Saturday overnight, so everyone else came over and Grandson and Granddaughter L met their new cousin, which was lovely.




Then on Sunday afternoon, Mr L, Daughter 2 and I went to the Botanics, where autumn appears to have started.



And since then I've been cutting out a steam train quilt for Mr L. (This isn't the final arrangement.) I'd been watching a video of Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt company, in which she demonstrated a "really quick and easy" method of making four-patch squares, so decided to try this. Alas, Jenny's idea of speed and ease isn't exactly the same as mine. It's a very clever idea, which would never have occurred to me (though I'm sure proper quilters do it all the time). You sew two big squares together at the left and right edges, with the fronts of the fabrics facing each other; cut them down the middle vertically; and then open the bits out, sew them together sideways and cut them in half vertically again, resulting in your four-patch square. Easy. Hmm. Easy if you're Jenny. If you're me... well, let's say that it allows you to make quite big mistakes with something you've laboured over for quite a while, and thus to waste quite a bit of fabric. These four-patches look all right from a distance but two of them are mysteriously slightly too small and I think I'll have to recut them. I'll just do it the slow but safer way this time. We live and learn.

(Thank you, by the way, to the non-blog-owners who've been leaving nice comments. They are much appreciated. If you had a blog, I would visit it and say hello.)

7 comments:

  1. It sounds busy in your neck of the woods. I like your quilt. I haven't tried quilting - yet . . .

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  2. Oh how exciting!!! I WANT a bus stop topper too - lucky little N! It looks like you had a wonderful weekend with all the children home. As for your quilt (which is looking lovely btw), I find there are more and more "cool" tricks that are supposed to speed piecing up, but they always make my head hurt, so I just cut my squares up and sew them together. It's slow but it's WAY less confusing!

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  3. This is the second time I've heard about this technique but my brain cannot compute it. Sew and then cut I still have NO IDEA how this works.

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  4. Anonymous6:09 pm

    I can imagine little N's excitement at having two bus stop toppers. I like his idea of running buses with passengers too.

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  5. LOL Pam you are so funny! I love reading about Grandson's little adventures, he is so cute:-) I love the Missouri Star quilt tutorials on You Tube, but no way would I have been able to follow them without first taking many classes in quilting!

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  6. you have just convinced me - if that were needed - that I could never ever ever be a quilter, apart from not being able to sew straight and never actually having used the new sewing machine I bought close to ten years ago - my one attempt demonstrating clearly that threading the damn thing was much too complicated. I crochet instead.

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  7. Your family does a great job of keeping in touch with one another! How fun all your grandson's transportation endeavors are...My grandson just said he wants to be a garbage collector someday! Love that quilt!

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