Learning Your Name Quiet Book Page

This is a pretty cool page!  To make the "paper" I used different colors of thread in my sewing machine.  On white felt, I sewed the top and bottom lines with a tight stitch and then the widest possible stitch for the middle.  Then I cut my nephew's name out of a double layer of felt, then I stitched them together, to give the letters a bit of weight.

The other side of the spread was a little pocket, with a snap closure to store the letters.

 

Pie Weaving Quiet Book Page

This one came together really easily.

For this Project you'll need:
a background page of felt (mine is 9 x 9 and white)
2 sheets of tan felt
1 sheet of red felt (or whatever filling color you choose)
pinking shears
scissors
sewing machine
hot glue gun




Step 1:  Cut out a circle with your filling color of felt.  Mine was 6.46 x 6.46 (I created a circle template in Word.

Step 2:  Cut a freehand crust, that will fit around the outer edge of your filling circle.

Step 3:  USING PINKING SHEARS, cut out six strips  - two long and 4 short (the long will be the diameter of the filling circle, then measure on your filling circle for the short pieces).

Step 4:  (Optional) I cut out little red circles - making it a cherry pie!  I think it adds a lot of dimension.

Step 5:  Sew everything together.  The filling to the background page.  Then pin your six strips under the crust and sew around the edge of the crust, using a zigzag stitch REMEMBER TO SEW ONLY ONE END OF THE STRIPS.

Step 6:  Hot glue embellishments to your filling.

This page introduces weaving to your child and is good practice of fine motor skills and logic.

Planning to make a Quiet Book - get started with a pack of felt:

Quiet Book - Octopus

I found this graphic online and printed it and cut it out and then taped it to my felt and cut around it.

Since Henry knows ALL the facts about octopuses, I know he'd appreciate having real "suckers"!  I found these in the craft section at Walmart.

I hand sewed each of the suckers on.

I freehand cut seaweed from two different colors of green felt and then just sewed up the middle of each piece.  I love the illusion of movement that gives them.

When Henry plays with his toy octopuses, it's usually in conjunction with a pirate ship and the octopus wraps its tentacles around the pirate ship.  I planned to put this octopus page opposite a pirate ship page I'm working on and I really wanted to come up with a way the tentacles could stretch to attack the pirate ship.  I was in Walmart automotive and saw a retractable badge holder and wondered if I could make that work.

Once I had the badge holder sewed underneath the octopus body, I hand sewed around the octopus.  

I didn't sew around the legs, leaving some movement to them.

It's VERY fun to pull the tentacles - I can't want for Henry to see it!

This gives you a better view of the badge holder.

I used stick-on googly eyes.

I LOVE how it turned out!

Making a Quiet Book - here's what you need to get started:

Quiet Book - Alphabet Page

For this Project You'll Need:

Alphabet Template - click here to get the one I created

2 background sheets of felt (I used gray)

1 sheet of white felt (to make the boxes behind the letters)

Approx. 72 in. of both sides of velcro

scissors

sewing machine

rotary mat/cutter (optional)

hot glue gun

31 colors of felt - the good news is, they can be tiny scraps of felt

💡 IDEA - make these pages after making all your other quiet book page, 

so you'll have plenty of scraps left to use.

Step 1: Planning - determine how big your quiet book pages are (mine are 9x9 inches).  Here's what I did to start from scratch - open Word and set my page size to 8x8 - I think I did this so there would be some room around the edges.  I made boxes that were 1.3 x 1.3 and that allowed 6 boxes across and 6 boxes down  - which allows you to make 36 letters.  (26 alphabet, 5 extra vowels, 5 letters you might need two of - especially of a child has a duplicate letter in their name).  Inside the boxes, I made each letter in font "Arial Black", size 80.

Step 2: Print your template and cut out each letter.  

Step 3: Cut out each letter.  I did this by holding my paper template against the felt and cutting around it.  You could trace the template and then cut.  You could also try this method I saw on Pinterest (after I was done cutting mine out)

Here are all my letters cut out - I decided to do two of each vowel, and now, I wish I had done 2 of the more popular consonants.

Step 4: Use your rotary cutter to cut the white felt into 31 __ size boxes.

Step 5: Cut your one side of your Velcro into 31 pieces that will fit onto the white squares. (The other side of the velcro will remain long.  I think I put the soft side on the back of the letters and the other side on the gray background). 

Step 6: Sew the pieces of Velcro onto the backs of the 31 white squares.

Step 7: Sew the long strips onto the gray background.  I did 6 strips on the alphabet side and three strips on the spelling side.

Step 8:  Hot glue the letters onto the white squares.

Step 9: Enjoy your work!  

On this side, Henry can practice spelling his name, practice spelling simple words, sort the letters by vowel/consonant or by color families.