Quiet Books

This year I decided to make Quiet Books for my sisters for Christmas. It was A LOT of work, but they turned out so cute that it was totally worth it. A girl at church had one and offered to help me get started on one. It was so nice to have her help me realize how simple it is and to help me with things like the button holes and zippers. Each of the pages in the QB were 9x10 which was enough room to do some super cute things on but not too big to fit in a church bag.

This will be very detailed so don't feel like you have to read everything. I tried to include links to my pages of inspiration and will put all of the patterns that I have at the end of my post. Please leave comments, they make all this typing worth it!!

Here is the cover. Sorry the picture is so blurry. I totally stressed over the colors and patterns because I wanted to be sure that it could be used for a boy or girl. I really like the corduroy on the front as a nice texture and color. I wanted to put a pocket of corduroy on the back of the cover to put any orphans or paper or whatever, but I forgot to sew it on before I sewed the whole thing together.

Page One

The first page was a house. The is the only place that I didn't use felt in the whole book. I put pictures of the kids behind the windows and a family picture behind the door. It was really hard to get the windows square. Looking back, I wish I would have laminated the pictures then put velcro on the back so that the kids could take the pictures and move them around to the different windows.

Page Two

For the second page I did some cute flowers that the kids can unbutton and move around. I was planning on using normal buttons for the center of the flowers, but then I found these super cute bug buttons at Hobby Lobby and thought they would be super cute. I am worried though that little hands will have a hard time doing the buttoning/unbuttoning because of the unusual shapes.

Page Three

This Noah's Arc page was super fun. To make the rainbow, I just sewed on scraps that I had around. At one point I found a felt fabric that had a bunch of animals on it. I cut those out and was planning on using those, but then I found these animal felt stickers. I thought they were cuter and a different/stiffer texture. I just stuck them to felt and cut out around them. So far the backs haven't fallen off, I'll keep my fingers crossed!!

Page Four

I really like the Tic-Tac-Toe boards that I saw on different blogs. I found some really cute flannel that had these monkeys and bananas on it, but couldn't find a place to use it. When I got to this page, I decided to switch up the game by using the bananas and monkeys as the game pieces. My kids LOVE it and play the game as well as play with the monkeys and bananas.

Page Five

Here is a Lunch Bag with a sandwich, apple, banana, and cookie. I thought this one would be boring, but my kids like to take it and pretend to eat it. I was really excited to find the black/white flannel as the background. I thought it looked like a picnic blanket or a diner floor.

Page Six

I saw this on someone's blog and LOVED the idea. It seems like EVERY two year old loves to snap and unsnap these clips. I put two different kinds of clips on this one.

My husband suggested that because I have it that the life jacket opens, I should put a hairy chest under there. :) While I'm not on board with that I had a friend suggest I put a yellow ducky under there which would have been cute. By that time I was ready to be done with the whole thing and just left it with the background.

Page Seven

This is a fishing page. I didn't get a final picture, but I took a sucker stick (a clean one from a make your own sucker pack) and hot glued some ribbon to the end. I then hot glued a magnet on the other end to use as the lure. I found these foam stickers of the fish and put felt on the back with a paperclip in between. For the ocean water, I put two snaps to help keep the material closed.

It's super fun to go fishing! My kids love arguing over whether you can actually catch octopi, turtles and sharks. It's really funny!

Page Eight & Nine

This is my absolutely FAVORITE page!!! It was definitely the most labor intensive but it was TOTALLY worth it!!!

The gas station has a shoe lace attached so that the kiddos can "fill 'er up" as they drive past. In place of the pine trees I've seen QBs that have a road sign with miles to grandma's house and stuff. I didn't have the patience for that so I added some pine trees. I really like the tire swing. When I took the pic, I didn't realize that it was all wonky like that. For the string I used a piece of burlap. For the words, I used printable iron on paper. My only word of advise is to test it on the same color of felt you will be using. I almost destroyed one page b/c I was in too much of a rush to test it. I used 1/4 inch flat satin ribbon to sew the lines on the road.

This second page has the house and garage. I had a micromachine around the house and was able to use this little guy as the actual car for the road. This one has a round metal ball on the bottom. My husband suggested putting magnets under the street so the car would stick to it. I totally could have done it, but he didnt' suggest it until AFTER I had everything stitched on. Totally not worth unpicking all that!

My son suggested putting a mail truck by the mail box, and my daughter suggested putting some birds in the trees by the house, but once again...too late.

Page Eleven

Of course we have to have a shoe tying page. I put white stitches down the toe to add some visual interest across the toe. I used white stitching along the red to make it pop and white eyelets for the holes. I tacked the shoelace down in the middle so it won't get away and the tongue most of the way. I put it on a textured background so it would look a bit more like the road.

Page Twelve

Here's the shameless plug for love. I put all of our pictures here on the back so that the kids can remember us. I laminated the pics and put velcro on the back so the kids can pull them off and move them around. Also, it'll be easy to update/change this page. The label at the bottom also doubles as a little pocket.

Here are all the patters that I still have. A lot of them I just printed out and then cut them out and traced them onto felt.

Reference Material

I used the flowers from this template.

I used this shoe as an original template then messed around with it to make it look like what I wanted. Sorry, no idea what I did...

Here are the templates for the town. My only real tip is to make sure the roads line up across the two pages before you sew them on.

TONS of Quiet Book ideas: http://vi.sualize.us/bayliss85/quiet%20book/

Lifejacket and Town: http://seanandjennyricks.blogspot.com/2010/09/ricks-family-quiet-book.html

TONS of QB links: http://pinterest.com/originalandrea/quiet-books/