Quiet Book - Carrots in the Garden

For this Project you'll need:

light blue felt

white felt

green felt

orange felt

red felt

gray felt

dark brown felt

light brown felt

scissors

thread

sewing machine (optional)

a button

This was one of the simplest pages to make because I didn't need to cut out any patterns from paper or make intricate details, I was able to freehand cut everything.  This pic shows everything cut out and laid out.

After I cut everything out, I used my sewing machine to sew first the clouds, then the light brown, leaving a few spaces for carrots to go (just backstitch on both sides of the opening), then the dark brown felt, sewing the sides, but leaving a large opening in the middle for carrots, then the green felt, leaving the whole top open as a pocket.  Then I sewed the red wheelbarrow and then the three gray strips of felt were the final, you'll see I decided to use a zig zag stitch on these.

Then I hand-sewed the button on as the "wheel" of the wheelbarrow.  The last step was to hand sew the carrots together.  I cut out two pieces of orange felt for each carrot, so I sewed around the edge of these, making sure the green leafy part was in between at the top.  As you see below, I tried different stitch lengths and techniques - I think that adds to the handmade charm!

I love thinking through all the things a child can learn from this page.  What carrots look like, what a wheelbarrow looks like, where carrots come from, how carrots are harvested, that carrots grow in the dirt, but the green top is above the dirt.

And I love the element of fun to pull the carrots out of the ground...

...and load them into the wheelbarrow!