Quiet Book Pages for Girls: Flower Garden and Hair Braiding

I just recently finished a quiet book for my nieces.  It was a lot of fun to make.  I love making things for people that I love (it makes sewing velcro onto everything that much more tolerable).  It was a nice change to make things for girls rather than little boys.  I thought that I'd share a few images from the Quiet Book.

 I found a great blog with some really fantastic Quiet Book pages, Crafty Chic.  I really loved her Hair braiding page and also a little puzzle page.   I wanted to incorporate activities that could keep the attention of little girls between the ages of 1-5.  The Puzzle Page seemed like a great option.  Lyric from Crafty Chic made her page with 9 pieces, but I chose to just have 4.  When making the actual images I had to plan out where I'd be stitching and embroidering so that it would be disrupted by the cutting of the image, 4 pieces just seemed much easier to work with.  I ended up making 3 puzzles, and apple, a bird, and a sunshine.  There is a pocket on the opposite page for storing unused puzzle pieces.  As with most pieces in the quiet book I used a double layer of felt to provide more stability when handling the pieces.  I am pretty pleased with how the puzzles turned out.

The Hair Braiding Page was a little bit intimidating to me.  I simply couldn't decide what the best way would be to attach the yarn.  I didn't want the doll to suffer with alopecia.  I ended up solving the problem by cutting several long strands of yarn.  I divided the length of the yarn into three sections with the middle section being a bit longer than the length of the hairline.  I braided the middle section, tied off the braid with some small pieces of yarn, and then attached the braid by stitching directly through the braid.  It seemed like a good solution to the problem (I am sure that this is one of those things that I have seen done and was stored in my mind only to be regurgitated at the proper moment).  If you visit Lyric's page you will notice that the design of my doll is incredibly similar to hers.  I love how simple she kept the face.  She is also quite clever with her storage solutions.  She made the body of the doll into a pocket, which I did also.  Inside the pocket are several elastics and ribbons for the dolls hair. (The cute Riley Blake fabric for the pocket was also used on the inner cover and crayon caddy, super cute!)

The Flower Garden Page is everywhere and in no way an original idea, but I still really like it.  You might notice that my small pink flower has three layers of fabric.  I did not sew all three layers of fabric together, in fact the bottom layer of fabric is stitched to the page, and the top two are stitched together.  Three layers of fabric is just too much for small fingers to handle when learning to button.

I also girled  up the tic-tac-toe board (no image).  I made flowers and butterflies for the pieces.  It turned out quite cute.

For the Name page I had to make more letters than I was used to. This book is primarily for my niece Ava, but her two older sisters will surely use it as well.  I made enough letters to spell each of their names (luckily they have some common letters which saved me some time).

If you are interested in seeing additional Quiet Book Page ideas be sure to check out the links on the right of my blog.

Quiet book pages, Tic Tac Toe

I think that it is nice to have a gender neutral pages in a quiet book, and by all means I understand that girls like and play sports as well, but I just think that it is nice to have a sports page for the little boys that have to spend most of their time buttoning on flowers. I have seen tic tac toe pages in other quiet books, but I think that this version is a lot of fun, I call it "tic tac toe-three balls in a row". In Clark's book this page consisted of footballs and basketballs. I really wasn't pleased with how the footballs turned out, but I think that these baseballs are a lot of fun. I traced the bottom of a spool to make the circles and then used the spool to mark the arcs in both the basketballs and the baseballs. The trickiest part about this page is stitching the baseballs. I adjusted a decorative stitch on my sewing machine so that it was the best proportion to my circle and then hoped for the best and started stitching. The baseballs are by no means perfect, but are homemade things supposed to be perfect?

The basketballs and baseballs attach with velcro. Snaps could be used, but I think that velcro is much easier for young children. Even if your toddler isn't able to play tic tac toe yet, they will have fun pulling off the balls and repositioning them.

In my son's book I used a decorative stitch for the tic tac toe board, but I chose to use felt for Danny's. The decorative stitches on my machine like to skip so felt seemed like a better option.

I think that it is a good idea to make a few spare pieces for your tic tac toe board. I have seen quiet books that include a pocket on the page, but I wanted to have my board as big as possible on the page. I figure that spare pieces can be kept in the pocket on the back of the cover.