How to make a Quiet Book...
....Cover
....Seasons Tree
....Barn and Finger Puppets
....Tent and Sleeping Bag with zippers
....Button Flowers
....Counting Flowers
....Alphabet Page
....Gumball Counting
....Dog with Buckle
My original post... otherwise called How to Make a Quiet Book Coloring Page!!!
You might remember that I mentioned a while back that I was participating in a Quiet Book page swap... well... the swap was this evening and I am now the proud owner of a very full book of activities for Cadence! One of the requirements for participating in the swap was that we would need to submit a blog post about our page, so this blog will serve that purpose. Feel free to ask any questions, and I will post links to the blog pages that everyone else submits so that you can create a book just like ours if you would like!
My Quiet Book page is a coloring page with crayons and a notebook on it. The finished product looks like this:
(sorry about the flash)
Supplies needed to make 20 pages like this (if you are only making one you won't need this much!):
Hobby Lobby:
- Pellon Peltex 70 Ultra Firm Stabilizer cut into 8.5x10in pages
- 5 sheets of red 9"x12" felt
- 1 sheet of black 12"x18" stiffened felt
- 1 spool red thread
- 1 spool black thread
Dollar Store:
- 5 boxes of 48 crayons (I know that you don't need this many crayons, but 5 boxes allows you to choose nice colors instead of ugly ones, and 5 boxes of 48 was cheaper than 20 boxes of 8.)
Walmart:
- 5 packages of 4 spiral memo books
Page Assembly:
- Cut the Pellon into 8 1/2"x10" pages
- Cut 20 rectangles out of the red felt to measure 2 1/2"x7" each.
- Cut 20 rectangles out of the black stiffened felt to measure 1 1/2"x 4 3/4" each.
- Pin a red rectangle onto your page 2" down from the top of the page and centered from left to right.
- Sew a straight line up and down in the middle of the rectangle to attach it to the page, and then remove the pins:
- Use a crayon to help you measure the pocket size. DO NOT sew the pockets flat, or when you put the crayons in, the page curves up into a semi-circle. If you were making the pages out of regular cloth, this would work, but on Pellon it does not. So you have to create a 3D pocket with the Pellon as the flat backing. For a regular sized crayon you need 1 1/16" of the red felt to make the pocket and you sew it onto the pellon 13/16" apart. If this is confusing, it will be helpful to use a crayon to measure and mark where you should sew:
- Then remove the crayon and sew a straight line. Repeat this until you have 6 pockets, 3 on each side of the center seam.
- There should be a small amount of red felt remaining on each end. Switch your sewing machine to the zig-zag function and sew up and down over the extra bit of felt to help secure the pockets.
- Next, use your notebook as a measuring tool to mark where to sew. I used pink chalk on the first several, but after a while I knew where to sew without measuring.
- Pin the black felt in place and sew a square on each end. (This picture is from a practice round, so excuse the messiness. Also ignore the zig-zag across the bottom of the pockets and the measurements written... none of them are correct, this was just a piece I was trying everything out on first. I used red thread so you could see the square, but on the real ones I used black to match the felt.)
- Then choose 6 crayon colors and place them and the notebook into their spots.
Helpful Blogs:
Skip to My Lou was a helpful blog for measurements, but again, you will have to modify the sewing methods in order to keep your page from curling.
At Second Street was a great inspiration for a similar page, though they made smaller pages so the notebook and crayons were on separate pages.
The Ricks Family was also useful, but similar to Skip to My Lou, they sewed a seam straight across the bottom of the pockets, which would have curled the page unless you used a regular cloth instead of the stiff Pellon.
