Quiet Book - Snowman Dress Up

Since I was giving this gift at Christmas, I wanted to include either a Santa or Snowman page and I settled on Snowman. I came up with a dress the snowman concept and made a bunch of hats, scarves and a few ties for the snowman to wear. Here was the planning phase:

I just copied and pasted hats I found online to use as templates for my hats.  I knew I wanted the hats to look super cute and realistic, so that meant a lot of detail work and hand-sewing.  I made a polka dot tie by adding French knots (first time doing them) and it turned out so cute!!!

Then I ordered really wide Velcro and made the entire snowman out of Velcro. Then I used stick on Velcro dots on the back of the hats and on the closet page.

For the background, I made snow on the ground and a few pine trees.  I made an adjoining page with shelves to store the hats.

For this Project you'll need: 

light blue felt sheet

white felt sheet

dark green felt sheet

brown felt sheet

colorful felt scraps (for the hats)

orange scrap (for the carrot nose)

wide Velcro

sticky back Velcro dots

needle and embroidery thread

sewing machine

Two small black buttons (for the eyes, optional)

snowflake brads (optional)

                                                 

If you're thinking of making a quiet book, an assortment of felt will help you get started!

Quiet Book - Counting Page

This is my third Quiet Book to make and this is the only page that I have put in all three.  It's a fun page, it's customizable to each kid (by which buttons you choose) and it's great for learning numbers and counting. 

 

For this Project you'll need:

two colors of felt sheets cut to 9x9 inches*

9 different types of buttons**

sticky felt numbers - I searched everywhere for these and only found them here at Joann Fabric

Needle and embroidery thread for hand sewing the buttons

sewing machine for sewing the flaps

*I've settled on 9x9 as a good size for all my quiet book pages, but if you're doing a different size, adjust the size of the felt 

**This seems obvious, but for lower numbers, you can have larger buttons and for higher numbers you need small buttons. I bought a lot of my buttons at Joann Fabric and a few from Etsy.

One dump truck

Two trains

Three cupcakes

Four paws

Five donuts (I think the flap closed right before I took my picture!)

Six pizza slices

Seven ducks

Eight reindeer

Nine cars

Step One - cut the felt sheet you're using for the flaps into nine equal squares

Step Two - Machine sew the flaps onto the page.  I like to use zigzag stitch for extra security

Step Three - put the felt number stickers on the flaps

Step Four - Hand sew the buttons under the corresponding flaps

This is actually a good page to start with because it comes together pretty quickly and it's very rewarding!  Maybe the most fun part about this page is to pick buttons!  

If you're making a quiet book, buying an assortment of felt is a good place to start!

Quiet Book Part 8 - Zipper Camping Page

This page is the first one that I did without any patterns.  It was fun, just cutting and seeing if the idea in my head would turn out.  

Hadley loves Lalaloopsy Tinies, so I thought they would be perfect accessories to this page!

Quiet Book Part 7 - Turtle and Cover

For the cover page, I knew I wanted Hadley's name and colorful bunting but then I felt like I should add something to the middle.  I'm not sure I love the beaded stars, but it does add some sparkle.  

This page was so hard to figure out!  I saw the idea on Pinterest, for a turtle who can hide in his shell, but there were no instructions and it took me forever. 

I ended up connecting the head and tail with a ribbon that can be pulled either direction, to make the head hide or to pull it out.  The problem is that if the ribbon is pulled too hard, the turtle could come all the way out of his shell!

Quiet Book Part 4 - Counting Page

This page was so easy and I LOVE how it turned out!  Hobby Lobby had buttons on sale for 50% off, so I went and picked out a bunch of fun ones and got a plain sheet of lavender felt and a glittery sheet.  I also found felt letters/numbers that stick on (which is what made this page so easy). 

 

I cut the flaps with my rotary cutter and mat.  Then I sewed them on with a zig zag stitch, to make them strong.  Then I stuck the numbers on.  Then I hand sewed the buttons on under the flaps.  Then only problem I ran into was that I bought soccer balls and saved them for under the 7 flap, but they were too large to fit under the flap, so I still need to find some small buttons to use. 

 

One circle

 

Two Kitties

 

Three Flowers

 

Four Monkeys

 

 

Five LadyBugs

 

Six Ice Cream Cones

 

Seven - TBD 

maybe stars...

 

Eight Flip Flops

 

Nine Crayons

 



Quiet Book Part 1

I've been on a break for the last few weeks...not planned, not because anything big was going on...I just didn't have any projects that I was excited about doing.  And I have to be excited about them.  Browsing Pinterest, I came across inspiration for a quiet book and got really excited about making one for my niece.  I found a lot of page ideas, but none came with complete instructions.  And that is the part of sewing that I like - figuring out how something is going to work - how to create a picture on Pinterest or an idea in my head. 

I think the reason there aren't good instructions about how to make each page - it's too complicated, intricate and time-consuming to document and explain every step.  So, like other bloggers, I'm not going to try - I'm just going to show you what I have done so far.

Gumball Machine

Barn with Farm Animal Finger Puppets

 

Mixing Bowl with Cupcake Ingredients/Oven Cupcakes

(Getting close, but still a work in progress)

 

Rainbow Fish

(Still in early stages - I want to add magnets to the fish, for the background make waves, with pockets where the fish will live, and add a fishing pole with a magnetized worm.)

 

It's been fun having a big project that I'm actually excited about working on, although I've been to Michael's so many times this weekend, the employees are like, "Oh, it's you."

 

And my home is craft-messy. #keepinitreal

 

I have more pages to make and then I have to figure out the world of crop-o-diles and eyelets and grommets, (oh my) and then put it all together.  I'll keep you posted!