A Tour: Finished Quiet Book Number Four

I recently finished making Quiet Book Number 4.  Can you believe it.  How have I agreed to make so many Quiet Books.  I've done it so many times because I make them for people I love.  This one is no different.  I made it for three little monsters that I like to call my nephews.  I know that I've posted similar images from previous quiet books before (see side bar), but I thought that it would be fun to take you on a tour of my recent quiet book creation.

The cover is pretty basic.  I did another monogram on the front.  I played with the idea of doing some monster appliques on the front, but in the end I liked the simple monogram best.  One change I made to this quiet book is that I used a snap closure in place of velcro. I didn't have any snapping pages in the book and figured that it would be a good thing for little hands to learn to do.

As you can see on the left I used some monster themed flannel as my "end paper".  It was pretty cute and I figured that most little boys like monsters.  Here's a view of the clock page.  There are some slight variations with the shape of the clock's hands, and the type of button that I used.  

I love the shoe lacing page, but it is SO much work.  I decided to go with a football lacing page this time.   There is another dog collar page, which I think turned out pretty cute.  I found the cat collar at Target in their $1 bins, a pretty good deal.

This page may look unimpressive, but I was pretty pleased with it.  I made a double decker crayon caddy to accommodate more crayons.  The top row of slots are actually full length.  I did this in the case that my Sister-In-Law wanted prefers the longer twistable crayons.  There are a few empty pockets on the right that need to be filled with a note pad and pencils.

This may be my favorite set of pages.  I am still a big fan of the garden page.  It is so fun for the little kids to help pull up the vegetables.  The Bronco on the right is a personal favorite as well.  Normally I make a truck for this wheel changing/button page, but for a personal touch I made a green Bronco just like the one that my dad had growing up (and that my older brother had intended on inheriting).  My older nephew knows all about the green bronco.

I love the mailbox page.  

My brother and his wife gave my nephews great names, but unfortunately for me they are longer than I am used to.  I had to find room for 7 letters.  Baby cakes number 3 is on the way, and it would be awful nice if they would name him something that is 7 letters or less and uses the letters N, A, T, H, P, R, E, S, A, N, and O.  I don't know maybe Thor.  Thor is a nice name right?

Another Tic-Tac-Toe page with balls.  Footballs and basketballs this time.  I decided that the balls needed their own pocket.  My brother loves soccer so I added some ribbon.  There was no way that I was going to piece together 6 soccer balls.  

Simple shape matching page and  a house with family photos.

Four piece puzzle with stacked pocket storage.  I love the pocket. There are three different puzzles, but I figured that one puzzle could stay on the board.  The stacked pocket allows the puzzle pieces to be separated without taking up too much space. What are the puzzles?  An apple, sunshine, and a soccer ball.

Here's a view of the back pocket.  Isn't it cute?  Okay it is pretty basic, but very necessary.  It stores all of the extra letters for spelling monster number 1's name.   

I made three little hang tags to sit on the ring of the book.  One for each little monster that will be using it. Aren't they cute?

For more information on individual quiet book pages see the links on the side bar.  If you decide to make your own quiet book and have questions just let me know.  I'd be happy to help.

Thank you to everyone who leaves such kind comments on my posts.  I really appreciate your nice words.  They keep me crafting.

Check out these great link parties that I'm participating in today.

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.

How to Make Quiet Book Page Forms

Above, The oh so problematic, first attempt, at Quiet Book Pages.  Notice the sad fraying edges.

The end result of the new process, much more satisfactory!

Alright so this probably won't be the most exciting post that I write, but it might be helpful to those of you out there trying to figure out how to make your Quiet Book Pages. I spent a lot of time debating over how I should make the pages for my sons quiet book. With Clark's I guess I was more anxious to get the project done so I decided that I would applique all of the parts and pieces to the page that was cut to the finished dimensions. I then sandwiched a thin piece of batting between the two pieces of fabric, and using a decorative stitch, finished the edges. I had thought that I would be saving myself a lot of time and work. Well I really didn't save myself time or work. I had a lot of trouble with my machine skipping stitches, and I wasn't able to encase the edges like I'd hoped (sadly, I don't own a serger). When I agreed to make a quiet book for a friend I knew that I had to find a better solution. I knew that I didn't want to use felt for the pages, and I also didn't want to have to use bias tape for all of the edges (I have seen it done, just seems cumbersome and expensive to me). The solution that I came up with is this...

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

1. Cut out one 8x16 inch piece of thin batting for each page (front and back). For example, the last quiet book that I made had four separate pages with two pages on each side and two sides to each page (clear as mud). Anyway, there end up being 16 pages total.  I cut out 8 pieces of batting cut to 16x8 inches (each individual page will be 8x8, but with two to a page it is 8x16).
2. Cut out one 10x18 inch  piece of fabric for each piece of batting (8 total in my book).  I chose to have 4 different colors of pages in my book so I cut out two pieces of fabric in each color.
3. Lay one piece of cut batting on top of the wrong side of one piece of cut fabric (center the bat).
4. Fold over the extra material at the corner of the batting and press. Repeat on all 4 corners of the page. (see image 1)
5. Pull the material tight on the short ends of the page and press.  Pin in place. (See image 2)
6. Pull the material tight on the long ends of the page and press.  Pin in place. Try to make sure that the diagonal edges of the long and short ends meet up as close as possible forming a sharp point at the corner of the page.(See imagea 3&4)
7. With fabric pinned and pressed topstitch the material in place 1/4" away from the edge of the fabric, right side up, around the perimeter of the page.

You have now completed the first side of your page.  Hooray!  Now go ahead and complete this process for the other side of your page, and for any remaining pages that you will be completing. Once you have finished adorning and appliqueing your pages you can stitch the front and back of your pages together, doing so will allow you to encase the ends of your strings.

Following this process ensures that all of your raw edges are encased, and I love the look and feel of the pages with the double layer of batting.  It also provides more stability to the page when appliqueing. 

This probably isn't the most exciting post, but hopefully it proves helpful to anyone out there who wants to attempt a quiet book.

If anyone has questions leave me a comment or shoot me an email.

Quiet Book Page, The Family Home

Alright, I have been slowly trying to integrate the quiet book pages into the blog, but it has been a longer process than I had intended.  This is the last page idea that I'll be posting---as far as I know.  This is such a little gem.  I love this because it is simple enough for the smallest of children to enjoy.  I also love the details.  This page features vinyl pockets behind the door and windows so that family photos can be displayed and enjoyed. I think that it gives the quiet book a real personal touch.  I left the top of the pocket open so that the pictures could be replaced as people grow.  I tried to make sure that the pictures were a snug fit so they wouldn't slip out on their own. I really hope that Danny likes it.

As with the rest of the pages it is my own design.  There are definitely more pieces to this than most of the pages, but the result is well worth the extra time.  Some of my favorite details are the bricks on the chimney and the stitched blossoms on the front bushes.  I had quite a difficult time deciding what color I should make the house, but I think that it turned out nicely.  (I just ordered felt for a play house for my son in the same colors...I can't wait to start that project).  I used a double thickness of felt on all moving parts and I love to use a triple stitch on moveable pieces as well.  I apologize for the washed out pictures. For some reason they never seem quite as washed out before I post them.  As you might be able to tell I didn't cut out the door and windows, I simply attached them to the solid piece of fabric below, it just seemed to be much easier.  If you wanted you could add a small white frame for trim around the windows and doors.

Quiet Book, Hello Sunshine

In advance I will apologize for the photo, it is quite washed out.  This is a fun little page to add to your child's activity book.  It is helpful in teaching children about the rising and setting of the sun.  The sun sits snuggly between the mountains and then can be moved and placed high in the sky.  It is a bit of a peek-a-boo game.  My toddler loves to be able to move the piece around.  This is a quite simple page to make. It is fun to use two different patterns and shades of purple for the mountains, but I was running low on purple prints so I just used the wrong side of the fabric for the far mountain. Using a lighter shade of purple in the back is a great way to add a bit of atmospheric perspective.

As with all of the moveable or handled pieces in the activity book, the sunshine has two layers of lining to provide stability (If you are using felt use 1 piece lining, and 1 piece felt).  For this sunshine I used an ultra soft no fray yellow fabric for the rays, and a printed pale yellow cotton fabric for the sun.  I wish that the yellow in the middle was a bit darker-oh well.  You can attach your pieces however you'd like. On this particular page I chose not to finish the edges on the mountains, I like the slight raveling on the edges.  I  used a triple stitch along the perimeter of the mountains to ensure that they were securely attached.  I used a blanket stitch on the sun itself, I think that it gives it a bit of charm.

The supplies that you will need for this page are:  lining or a thin bat, two shades of purple fabric, 1 piece of sew on velcro, 1 piece of 1/4" wide elastic (About 6 inches long), embroidery floss for details, and your prepared quiet book page.

Hello Sunshine Instructions Hello Sunshine Template Please note that the written instructions and template are two different files and will need to be printed separately.

Quiet Book, What time is it?

I think that anyone that had a quiet book growing up probably had a clock page. This is to teach kids to tell time and of course recognize numbers. Each color or shape on the clock has it's own layer of fabric and lining. I stitched the numbers onto the face of the clock and then pinned them all to the page and finished the ends. This page I used cotton fabric so I made sure to use either a machine blanket stitch or zig zag stitch to finish my edges. For the hands on the clock I used some colored pieces of plastic that were from some packaging materials for our mouse. I pushed a hole through each of the pieces of plastic using an awl (a larger needle would work as well) and then attached the button and the hands to the book. Select a button that has a loop and not the two or four hole attachment pattern.

Quiet Book, Dog

I had really wanted to put a dog page in Clark's quiet book, but I never got around to it. I still have time though due to the fact that you can add and subtract pages with the ring/buttonhole system of binding the pages together.

The purpose of this page is simply to help children learn to work a buckle. The collar that I used was a cat collar. I found it at Michael's for $1. 00. I drew out the design of the dog, cut out coordinating spots, a tongue, nose, and a tag for his collar (I really like the doggy bone detail). I was nervous that my machine wouldn't handle sewing through the collar, but it wasn't a challenge at all. When positioning the collar I think that the thing to remember is to cut is slightly longer that you need it. I cut the collar, turned the first end in 1/2 inch and used a triple stitch to reinforce it. After you have attached one side you need to turn in the other end and pin it in place. Once it is pinned in place you can unbuckle the collar and have easy access to your raw edge. I also zig zagged the raw edges down to prevent fraying. For the eyes of the dog I used some simple (non googly) eyes that you can purchase in the doll/stuffed animal section of most craft stores. I have seen them in both Joann's and Michaels. Once they are attached you will need to clip the ends. I used some wire cutters and just clipped them right off. You will want to leave a very small nub so that the backing doesn't fall off, but make sure that they don't stick out enough to interfere with the backside of your page.

Quiet Book, Shape Matching and Name

I'm doubling up, two pages in one post. These pages are pretty similar in that they are both made from simple felt shapes. I used two pieces of felt for each shape or letter, providing them with a bit more stability. I cut out the shapes with the top layer being slightly smaller than the bottom layer. I then attached my velcro pieces (rough sides) to the back of the bottom layer of the felt shapes and letters. *For the shapes I cut out a third piece of felt the same size and color as the bottom layer of the shape, and attached the softer side of the velcro to the piece. After attaching the velcro to the bottom layer it is time to pin the top layers on, and then do some top stitching-Yeah. With both of these pages I used an apple green thread for my topstitching, but in general I use white thread when attaching the velcro. Next it is time to mark on your pages the position of your letters or shapes, and in the case of the letters attach your softer side of velcro. In the case of the shapes, you will be attaching the coordinating felt piece with velcro already attached. Have I lost anyone, the process is simple, but explaining it-not so much.

These are great pages to teach children to recognize shapes and colors. The name page is great to help children recognize letters and how to spell their name.

Quiet Book, Key to my Heart

I know that you all are probably hoping for something other than quiet book posts, I'll get there. I just have to get through the pages. Hopefully by Monday I'll have a different project to share. I am working on several projects.

Because of pure blogging laziness, this will be a one picture post. For Clark's quiet book I made a lock and key page that was a treasure chest. The only problem is that for the treasure I used several jeweled and metallic buttons. I just couldn't in good conscience give -D- a quiet book choking hazard. I think that this is another fun option. It is a heart that is locked. It can be opened and reveals a photo of a loved one. It says 'You have the key to my heart", cheesy I know, but oh so sweet.

In this particular case Danny's grandmother lives quite far away, she wanted him to have a picture of her with her name nearby so that he could remember her and what she looks like. I made the photo pouch out of a medium weight vinyl and stitched. It was the first time that I had sewn with vinyl, but I was quite pleased with the results. Even though the vinyl wouldn't fray, I chose to do a double-fold hem to provide stability at the pocket opening. The thing to remember when doing this is that you need to size your photo pocket so that it doesn't show when the heart is closed. You can also select the photo and measure it's size before you design your heart.

On either side of the photo pocket I stitched Danny's grandmother's name "Abuelita -----" (not pictured) so that he could not only recognize her face, but also her name.

It is a cute little page that is very personal and quite fun for little ones. My son loves opening up his treasure chest, and it seems like most little kids love keys.

Sorry about the washed out photo (blogger laziness once again).

Quiet Book page, Rotating Tires

I think that this is such a great page to have in a little boy's quiet book. I don't know about other little boys, but my son LOVES trucks and cars. If Clark sees that something has wheels then in his mind it also has an engine. I think that trucks are just a part of childhood for little boys. This page is great in allowing little fingers to learn the mechanics of buttoning. The object is to change or rotate the tires of the truck by removing one tire, and replacing it with another.

When I made my son's book I used cotton fabric for both the body of the truck and the tires. I am so glad that I chose to use felt on this page. The tires work out so much better than with cotton fabric. I know that when a lot of people make their quiet books out of felt they don't finish edges or use button hold stitches for buttoning activities. I think that it really adds a polished look to use an actual button hole stitch, and to use a machine stitched blanket stitch around the end of the tire (I also think that it makes it look like it has a bit of tire tread).

This is a more advanced sewing page as far as details go. I used a satin stitch with various colors of thread for the headlights, tail lights, mirror, and door handle. I think that it turned out quite nice and hopefully Danny really likes it.

You can use buttons of your choice for the wheels. I happened to have two matching gold buttons that I used, but silver would be a nice choice as well.

Quiet Book page, Crayon Caddy

You have probably seen all of the really neat crayon caddies and wallets out there. I think that they are great and very helpful in carrying your crayons to church or transporting them in the diaper bag. When I started out making my son's quiet book I really wanted to incorporate the idea. Adding a quiet book page that is a crayon caddy means that you have one less thing to stuff into your bag when getting it ready to go. You simply have to remember the quiet book, and you already have crayons and paper.

This page is quite simple to make. I used a soft patterned flannel for the caddy (this is the same fabric that I used on the inside of the cover). I used a double layer of flannel to add more stability to the case. I also edged it with some coordinating ribbon. Because I had planned on having slots for crayons, paper, and pens I had to determine how long and wide I wanted my slots to be. I needed more fabric to stabilize the notepad than the crayons. I knew that I only wanted to fabric to hit the crayons just above half way up the length of the crayon. I measured, marked, and stitched at the bottom. The crayons that I was using were thinner than crayola crayons or chunky crayons, but I wanted to make sure that the caddy could accommodate different types of crayons. Hopefully the quiet book outlasts the crayons, right. I measured how wide I wanted each of the crayon pockets to be and stitched in equal increments. On the other half of the page I made a pocket for the note pad and two slots for a pen or pencil. I think that it is pretty effective, and pretty cute.

Quiet Book page, Lacing a shoe

Oh the infamous shoe lacing page. This is a quiet book page that has been in books for years, and with good reason. I think that it is a great way to teach your toddler or child bothlacing and tying skills. I must admit that this was the page that I saved for last. I have just had major issue with so many of the shoe pages that I have seen. It is really difficult to find a good view of the shoe that still allows for proper lacing and tying of the shoe. I had intended on including this quiet book page in Clark's book, but in the end I changed it to a football lacing page.

Although I dreaded making this page, and I will admit that I am not thrilled with the result, it isn't the worst that I have seen. I tried to add little details that would distract from the awkward angle of the shoe. I added some personalized labels to the shoe , the tongue has the letter "D", and on the insole it says "Danny" (it was supposed to say Danny's kicks, but I ran out of room). I also really like the combination of colors. I think that the dark blue, the apple green, and the orange stitching look really nice together. I chose to use eyelets for ease of lacing. On Clark's football I used a small buttonhole stitch that also worked well, but for the shoe I prefer the eyelets. One of the problems that I had was finding shoe laces that were short enough for the lacing on the page. I think that I ended up getting 30" laces. The lace is a bit longer than I would like, but it may end up making the lace learning process easier for little hands.

Quiet book page, Zip Zip Hooray

This is one of the least interesting Quiet Book pages to look at, but it can provide quite a bit of fun and entertainment for toddlers. My son just loves to move the zippers back and forth. On Clark's book I put the zippers on a diagonal, but with this particular page I chose to put them on a horizontal to save room for the button holes. Quite a bit of planning is necessary when choosing where to position your objects on the page to accommodate button holes or eyelets.

I chose to use three different colors of zippers and to position them facing different sides so that they can go back and forth. This is a great page to help your toddler learn the mechanics of zipping a zipper. There are several pages out there that incorporate zippers into images such as zipping up a tent, tepee, pair of pants, ect. I chose to keep the page as simple as possible. It would also be fun to have an even larger amount of zippers in differing colors to teach the order of the color rainbow.

This is a simple page that doesn't require a large amount of sewing or detail. It is always nice to have a simple quiet book page to give you a bit of a break when making a detailed quiet book.

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.

Quiet Book Pages, Vegetable Garden

This is one of my favorite pages in the quiet book, it is also one of my son's favorite pages. He loves to pull the vegetables out of the ground. This is the second version of this page that I have made. In my son's book I didn't have quite as many details (the sign is absent, and the green leafs are a bit simpler), I think that this attempt was much more successful. It is a bit easier on the eye. In my son's book I chose not to use any felt. I don't know why, buy I was just really anti felt and wanted to use "real" fabric. Felt has made my life so much easier, and I really don't think that it looks bad at all. Now the thing that is hard to look at is my son's book with all of the finished edges. It is really hard to finish edges on leafs and small little corners. I love that you can just add some topstitching to felt and it looks finished. Felt....oh what a blessing. You will probably notice that I didn't use Felt for everything. The vegetables in the garden are actually made from fabric, but I just fabrics that won't fray.

I used my button hole stitch on my machine to make the slots for the vegetables to be pulled. It seems to work well. I made the holes just barely bigger than the carrots. They are actually a bit smaller than the beets (or whatever they are), this is nice because then the vegetables don't fall out of the book on their own. You have probably noticed that there is velcro stitched in the bottom right corner, this allows for repositioning of the vegetables. I am quite pleased with how the page turned out....if only the beets didn't look like strawberries.

Quiet Book Pages, Love Letters

As Promised Here are some pictures from Danny's Quiet book. I love these pages for the mailbox. Danny's grandmother thought that it would be fun to have a page where Danny could learn to make sentences like "I love Mami". I thought that the mailbox would be the perfect pocket for all of those love letters to mom.

One of the great things about quiet books or activity books is that you are able to keep your kids busy, but also allow them to learn new things and develop new skills. This particular page allows for development of sentence structuring skills, and also the development of motor skills as children open and close the mailbox, rotate the mailbox flag, and pull and place the velcro attached envelopes.

I think that it is so much fun to personalize the pages. This particular mailbox is personalized with a last name stitched on the mailbox, and with personalized envelopes. So now Danny can make sentences like: "I love Mami", "Daddy loves Danny", "I love Abuelita", ect.

Quiet books are fun to make because you are ultimately in control of how much detail you put in. I personally like a fair amount of detail, but I try not to go overboard. The stamps for example are there, but I didn't make a full scene or image on each stamp (which I considered doing). I think that the small block of color is sufficient for the project. I prefer stitching letters on the page with embroidery floss rather than using paint pens. I just think that it compliments the materials better. Quiet books also take a great deal of time and work. I want the book to last a long time, and I also want to be satisfied when I am looking at it. In my opinion there is nothing worse than staring at something you made and wishing that you had done things differently.

A few tips if you decide that you want to try this project:

• Use the soft side of the velcro on the backs of the envelopes so that it doesn't stick to the inside of the mailbox and pull on the felt.
• Use two layers of felt instead of one in the areas that will be handled most (flag, mailbox shell, mailbox flap, and also the envelopes).
• Stitch details such as names or stamps onto 1 layer of felt and encase the strings and ends with the second layer of felt.