Quiet Book (Beginner Sewing)

Do you want a great way to keep your toddler entertained in a restaurant, in the car/airplane, or doctor’s office? Fear not! I have the solution for you!

After more searches on the web, I discovered quiet books. I can’t believe I have never heard of these before. I instantly wanted to try to make these. I was a bit intimidated, because these looked so neat. I thought I couldn’t possibly make one for my kids, but I really wanted to give it a shot. I also have a friend, who showed me pages she was working on for a book for her son. Her pages were so cute and so well-done, I was instantly impressed and had tactile proof that these were real.

I searched online and first found some templates at a great website by a gal named Jocelyn. I pretty much made the majority of the pages found on this site.

 She made it so easy for anyone to do it. All I had to do was print out the templates, cut them out, pin them to felt and cut them out. I bought 1 yard of pellon and cut it into 9″x9″ squares. I then put a piece of felt on top of the pellon to add a background color. The barns, flowers, etc. were all sewn onto the felt and pellon with my sewing machine. There were a few things that needed to be sewn by hand: faces to farm animals, yellow lines on the road page, buttons for the flowers.

I also found beautiful, professional-looking pages at Imagine Our Life. This lady is the most impressive, quiet book maker I have ever seen. It is amazing how she gets all the pieces to look so wonderful. I made the sandcastle pages and the circus train pages from this site. 

 I improvised on both, mostly because I didn’t want to have to buy extra stuff. I wasn’t looking to spend a whole bunch of money. The pellon and sheets of felt weren’t that much. I just bought an individual sheet of felt for what I wanted to make. I mostly got them at Hancock Fabric, but Jo-Ann’s also had some neat ones that I couldn’t find anywhere else (sand felt sheets). I had buttons from my grandma’s large collection, I inherited. I also had to buy some Velcro at Michael’s, but with coupons, a package wasn’t more than $2. I also didn’t have to buy thread, since I also inherited many spools from mom and grandma.

The last site I used to get ideas was Serving Pink Lemonade. This site has lots of templates as well, and it was here that I found out about Pellon. Great Idea!! It makes the book stiffer than if I were to just use felt alone. I used the “boy” template and made a dress-up boy page. I did the most improvising on this page, since I didn’t have the template for socks, underwear or hair, so I had to make those myself.  The website had the template for shirts and pants, so I improvised to make shorts also. Later on, I might make more clothes and hats, but I haven’t as of yet. I also needed someplace to put the clothes, and I thought about using this green zipper I found with my grandma’s things. It was the perfect size and color, so I decided to make a “closet” for the clothes with a dark piece of felt and sewed on the zipper. I used my machine to sew the “closet” onto the light green background. This allows my son to practice the skill of using a zipper. He loves it!

I try to keep the quiet book up and only use it when we travel. That way, it will be new and interesting to him on a long trip. We took a trip to visit my other grandma, and spent 5 hours in the car. I didn’t want to just play movie after movie on the DVD player, so I thought I would give the quiet book a try. At this point, I only had the barn and boy pages done, but he spent lots of time with both of them. I chose not to attach them into a book, because I wanted him to just take a page out at a time. This way, both boys can make use of them. Instead of making into the traditional book, I made a cover to go over it instead.