Quiet Book - Shapes Page

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I did it!  I did it!  I did it!  I finished a quiet book page!  No, really.

I know this isn't shocking news to anyone but me (and maybe some of you who know my propensity to start and never finish huge craft projects...) but when you make your own Quiet Book, you will be equally excited about your first finished page.  It isn't perfect by any means, but it is amazing to me.  

I give you The Shapes Page!

The felt shapes snap on to their corresponding fabric shapes on the page.
I tried to make the colors somewhat similar, too.

I'm a very visual person.  Writing directions is a bit of a struggle.  (Maybe I should unearth my How-To outline that worked so well for my third-graders.)  If you have questions after reading this, please ask.

Each shape is 3 pieces of material - 2 felt, 1 fabric.  The bottom piece of felt and the fabric both have snaps.  The top piece of felt is embroidered, and I machine sewed the two pieces together.  (Hahahahaha, that went awesome.)

To make the snaps stronger (remember, a toddler will be ripping these off the page) I put a piece of fabric behind each one before attaching the snap.  If you could see the backs of the snaps, you would see white material behind each piece of felt or fabric.  This is why I had a top piece to the felt.

For the shapes I either traced household things or used outlines I found by googling "shapes outlines".  There are a million printables out there to get the shapes you want.  It was difficult to choose just eight.

I sewed the fabric shapes on using some cool patterned stitch on my machine (button stitch?) that looked really awesome in another quiet book.  By the end, I was thankful that I was using white thread on a white background, because it devolved quickly.  I won't show you a close-up of the crescent.  Let's just say it ended in a straight stitch across the curve, and me stomping off to make dinner.  Stupid crescent.


The embroidery was an adventure.  I'd only ever embroidered one thing in my life and, in my lexicon, "embroidery floss" is synonymous with "friendship bracelet string."  There are many great tutorials on the web, though.  As stated above, I'm extremely visual, and this image is what got me through most of the embroidery.  It is emblazoned on my screen, I've had it up so often.


Things I would do differently next time:

I would cut the top piece of felt, decorate it, and then attach it to a bottom piece that was big enough to be the shape, but not yet cut, snap piece attached.  Then I would do the same with the fabric - attach the snap to a piece big enough to be the shape, but not cut.  Next, I would snap the two pieces together, pin it all in place, then cut it out.  It would avoid all the lining up issues I had.  Some of the snaps are wildly off, so the shapes don't cover... the most irksome being the crescent.

I would fuse the fabric shapes to the background... so maybe cut this with the above?  I had purchased Heat 'N Bond for this exact reason (and to finish the garden page) but I did not purchase an iron with which to apply said Heat 'N Bond.  (Our old iron was forgotten at our last home in NC, but we did own one, to be clear.)

I might put something more into the shapes.  We emptied a bag of Cherrios this morning (a weekly occurrence around here) and I cut a piece of the cleaned bag to fit inside the trapezoid.  Now it crinkles.  The bunny has a fuzzy tail, which V. is obsessed with.  I'm sure I could have thought of more creative things to do, but at this point I feel that there is so much going into every page that there will be more than enough opportunity for creativity.

And for those of you who don't sew or embroider, and are as clueless as I, some mistakes to learn from:

Don't start on corners.  This is a good rule for anything.  It may seem like a great idea to start that embroidery design or sewing right there on the corner, but it isn't.  The ends of your embroidery won't be nicely enclosed in the shape if you start it on a corner (and have some mad sewing skills like I) and if you start sewing on the corner - particularly felt-on-felt - your machine will let you know how very very bad this idea is.  Start on a nice edge.  You'll get back to it eventually, anyway.

Use pins, even if the pieces are small, for at least one side.  You don't want to be trimming everything later, realizing that your shape is not half what it used to be, or is somehow an entirely different shape altogether.


Maybe this will be done by her second birthday!

Sneak Peek Saturday

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 Here is a Quiet Book sneak peek!

Garden page:

left side

right side

And our March books:  Seuss, Purim, and gardening (not pictured).

V. woke up signing "want" and making elephant noises.  She wanted to read first thing this morning!

Quiet Book, Day 1

Pin It About a month ago, I decided to make a Quiet Book for Baby.

All the blogs I've read about making quiet books usually mention how they are these beautiful heirlooms that children treasure for ages, and that to create one, you have to be a tad bit crazy.  (If you aren't you will be by the end of the process.)

I will tell you this right now: I am NOT someone who sews.  I dream of being someone who sews, but yarn is more my medium of expertise.  My step-mother let me play with her sewing machine when I was a kid, and I had to cut the bobbin out, I made such a hot mess of the thread.  That is the best way to learn how to fix a sewing machine, though, so I have the threading down at least.

I bought a sewing machine years ago (toting it home on a subway train) and I've used it very few times.  (Lingering fear of bobbins.)  Just this past Christmas I discovered that it does something called a straight stretch stitch, allowing me to line the Fair Isle stockings I knit for the holidays.  I figured if I could figure out how to sew Jersey knit stretchy fabric, a quiet book wouldn't be so difficult.

But I had no clue where to start.  So I bought this pattern from The Quilted Fish to get an idea.

The I-spy page was a design I liked, so I started there, fussy-cutting dozens of pictures out of fabric.

My husband is kindly sharing his desk with me.

Now I have a sewing center!

After sewing three pieces together, I decided the process would be better with Oreos and some Kefir.

Lesson: Oreos dipped in Kefir is not as good as you might hope.  Stick to milk.  Also, if you decide to reward yourself every few squares, you are going to run out of Oreos.  I decided I'd save the treats for crisis situations and the finished product.  I didn't want to condition myself into craving Oreos every time I heard a sewing machine turn on.

                                        

I had sewed several rows of blocks together when this happened:

It wasn't too bad, because the bobbin was nearly out of thread.  There wasn't much to get tangled.

Then it happened again.

At one point, I thought I had finished, but I terribly mis-sewed two rows together.
I went to look for the seam ripper.

And somehow, cardboard got stitched into part of it.

But five Oreos, some Kefir, and a glass of milk later, I had finished the first step of the I-Spy page!

(The white fabric underneath is the size of one page, plus 1/4 inch seam allowance.)