Toddler Chalk Number Quiet Book

If you've been following my recent posts, you would know that my Etsy store has been undergoing a transformation. I'm selling out some products I've had for a while, added a few new ones and updated several others with new fabrics and some new features. I've also joined the Etsy Make For Good Campaign this year with two great creative products for kids. I am so happy with how the store is looking at the moment, and just in time for the pre-Christmas shoppers - bring it on!

This Quiet Book has been in the works for a while, but life has been busy these last few months with changing jobs and reassessing a few other projects I've been involved in, but here it is finally finished.

There are ten number pages with chalk vinyl numbers appliqued on that little ones can trace around with chalk. Each page also has a matching bead counter so that kids can practice counting to each number and associate each figure with its amount.

 

 

I've also added in four new cover designs - bright, colourful and very fun! 

Check out the books here: https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/476407589/toddler-chalk-number-quiet-book?ref=shop_home_active_1

Sewing Tutorial: Putting together your Quiet Book pages to make a book

You've spent hours cutting out little felt shapes, positioning them on pages, sewing, stitching on faces and finishing touches and now you have the pages all made for your Quiet Book. Well done! It's no easy task. No doubt plenty of patience, glasses of wine and cups of tea have passed between you and your Quiet Book pages. So let's take a look at one way to put it all together and make a book out of what you've got in front of you.

Work out the order of your pages and then pair them up in front to back pairs. Put them right sides together. Sew around with approximately 1cm/0.5 inch seam, leaving a gap wide enough for turning out the right way. Trim the corners as in the picture below.

Turn out the right way and push the corners out to neaten. It should look something like this:

Then sew a top-stitch a few millimetres from the edge to neaten it off and close off the opening.

Covers can be made in the same way (you'll need front and back covers):

• right sides together
• sew around, leaving an opening
• trim corners
• turn out the right way
• topstitch edges

I like to add a button tab to my cover. The length and width depend on the thickness and size of your book. Cut two rectangles, allowing a 0.5cm/0.25 inch seam and follow the same steps as above.

Of course there are loads of options for putting your pages together, but my favourite way is to use binder rings. I then sew two buttonholes on each page where I want to place them. Easy! Especially if your sewing machine does automatic buttonholes as mine does :-)

Sewing tutorial: Quiet book pages - Bead counter

This is one page I really like to include in my books. Both of my kids love counting and one of their favourite pages in their quiet book is the bead counter. They enjoy moving the beads across, and they also learn their colours by practicing with the beads. It is an easy and effective page.

The starting point for making the page is deciding how wide to make the counter (then cut your thin ribbon in appropriate lengths), to what number to count to (in my larger books, I have include counters that go up to ten), and finally what colours to choose. 

The ribbon I use is very narrow and I do not like to take any chances with safety with beads coming loose, so my first step is to space the ribbons on the page and sew them to the page background. My green felt is about 1.5cm wide, so I sew along the ribbons for about a length of 1cm on one side first. Then I thread my beads on and sew down on the other side to secure the ribbons down and lock the beads in. 

Place the felt lengths over the ribbon ends where you have sewn and pin down. Sew a stitch around the edges. Finally trim off the threads and ribbon ends and your bead counter is done!

Sewing Tutorial: Quiet Book Page - Tent and Sleeping Bag (zippers)

The idea for this page came from Still:Living, but has been modified over time by me.

I usually use a cotton drill or poly cotton for the blue sky backing and felt for the remainder of the page.

STEP ONE

You will need to draw on your transfer paper:

• a rectangle for the background (leaving about three cm around all sides for stitching and borders), to be ironed onto blue cotton fabric. 
• a crescent moon to be ironed onto white felt. 
• outline for the doll, to be ironed onto a skin coloured felt. 
• outline for dolls clothing - shorts, shirt to be ironed onto chosen felt colours. 
• outline for dolls hair to be ironed onto chosen felt colour. 

Iron these pieces onto the corresponding fabrics and and cut out.

STEP TWO

Peel off the paper layers. Iron on the background piece to the page fabric. Then iron on the moon shape in the top left corner. 

Iron the body felt piece onto a neutral background piece of felt and then iron on the shirt, shorts and hair.

  

STEP THREE

As you will not be ironing them on, but only sewing, you will also need a triangle for the tent, cut through the centre and a rectangle for the sleeping bag, also cut through the centre.

Sew these either side of a zipper, making sure that the bottom edge is against the bottom edge (where the zipper closes) of the zipper.

Trim the zipper along the edge of the felt and sew several times over near the top, cut off end of the zipper. 

 

STEP FOUR

Check that the sleeping bag fits under the tent and if not, trim sleeping bag down.

Sew the sleeping bag onto the background. Then sew the tent over the top. Sew a zigzag stitch around the edges of the background.

STEP FIVE

Cut out the doll and sew around the edges to fasten the felt layers together. Sew on eyes and a mouth.

FINISHED! Put your doll to bed in her/ his tent :-)

 

 

 

 

Sewing Tutorial: Quiet Book Page - Monkeys and Balloons

The idea for this page came from Serving Pink Lemonade, although I've simplified it to include just the monkey and the balloons, and generally only make it with buttons and buttonholes nowadays.

STEP ONE

My previous post explains how to prepare your pages and other materials and also mentions the applique paper that I prefer to use to make the process easier.

The first step is to draw your shapes onto the applique paper.

For the monkey page, you will need:

• monkey
• monkey's belly and face
• eight balloon shapes - choose four colours and make two iron on balloons of each colour. This will make four balloon backgrounds to attach to the page, and four button-on balloons.

Cut roughly around your outlines on the paper and iron on to the felt. Follow the ironing instructions for the particular applique adhesive that you choose to use.

Then cut your felt shapes out and peel off the paper layer, leaving an adhesive backing on the back of the felt shapes.

STEP TWO

Put your shapes into position on your page fabric and iron on.

For figures that have two layers (or more), such as the monkey below, do only one layer at a time. Start with the bottom layer (in this case, the dark brown monkey outline) and then iron on the next layer (belly and face in light brown). 

STEP THREE

Make the balloons. Iron the remaining four balloons onto their matching coloured felt and cut them out.

STEP FOUR

Sew around everything. You can choose to skip this step, but the applique adhesive will eventually lose its effectiveness and the felt shapes will come off, especially after repeated buttoning and play. It's much safer, and looks much neater if you sew around everything.

Start with the shapes attached to the page. Sew close to the edes with a machine stitch. For the monkey, you could choose to just sew around the belly and face as this will also secure the body to the page.

 

Also sew strings to connect the monkey's hands to the balloons. 

 

 

STEP FIVE

 

Sew button holes into your balloons.

 

 

STEP SIX

 

Do all hand sewing. For the monkey page, this will mean sewing buttons to the balloons on the page, and embroidering the monkey face.

 

When you have finished, put your page aside until you have all pages finished.

 

Well done!

 

Part III - Shapes Quiet Book

Here is the third kind of Quiet Book that I finished over the last week. It's the Shapes activity book.

The Triangle page has a cute little tent which opens with a zipper to a little sleeping bag, also opening with a zipper.

Next is the Rectangle page which uses velcro to match colours and sizes. Next time I might do a sky background and make it look like a cityscape.

The Square page has the pieces of a house that stick on with velcro. Just the square pieces can be taken off.

The Circle page has a bus with wheels that come off (velcro again, but next time I'll use buttons to add some variety). The Oval page is the cute little chicken in a egg page that I've used in a couple of my other books.

The Diamond page is a little puzzle.

You can find my other two books here:
http://richesandroses.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/part-ii-alphabet-quiet-book.html
http://richesandroses.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/finished-four-new-sets-of-quiet-books.html

And a closer look at the Shapes book in my Etsy shop:
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/167005046/toddler-quiet-book-shapes-theme?

Part II - Alphabet Quiet Book

This is another of the Quiet Books that I finished at the weekend. I'm really happy with the variety of activities to do on the different pages.

A is for Apple...

The colours on this page came up really nicely. The apples are fastened on with velcro. Beneath each apple is the same shape to make it easy to match the sizes. 

B is for Balloon...
I've used velcro again here to fasten on the balloons in a colour matching activity. In the past I've also used coloured buttons and metal snap fasteners.

C is for Cat...
This is a simple page, but nice for practicing tying knots or bows.

D is for Dog...
My daughter has one of these pages in her quiet book and she loves opening and closing the buckle. Great for fine motor skills.

E is for Egg...
I love zipper pages. I think it's because my daughter has always enjoyed playing with the zipper page in her quiet book. Such a simple idea to us, but for little ones, they love opening the zipper and finding a little surprise inside to take out and put back in.

F is for Fish...
Magnetic fishing is always so much fun.

Stay tuned for some "How to" posts in the near future :)

See more at https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/167014595/toddler-quiet-book-alphabet-theme?

Finished - four new sets of quiet books! Instalment one: Counting

Last night I felt like I had accomplished something big. It's taken several weeks of half an hour per evening to get these eight quiet books (two in each of the four new designs - counting, alphabet, colours and shapes) finished. 

Miss almost 3 loves counting. Almost to the point of obsession at the moment. We're a bilingual family and she now manages to get to 13 in both English and German. Most numbers beyond 13 come out something that sounds a lot like sixteen. Anyway, the point of that is that her bead counter is her favourite page in the Quiet Book that I made her more than a year ago. I wanted to find a way to include one in this counting book, so I decided to just go up to five.

One shoe... two people...

And my two favourite pages: three animal finger puppets and four balloons.

And finally, five fish!

Check it out in more detail in my etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/167004470/toddler-quiet-book-counting-theme? and stay tuned for some patterns and instructions in the coming months.

Lesley :)

Works in progress: Quiet books, toddler sun hat

The quiet books are coming along slowly. Miss almost three has had a few stays in hospital over the last few weeks after having her tonsils and adenoids removed and Mr 10 months has dropped back to two naps per day now so it also seems those quiet little snippets of time during the day when I could work on sewing have passed as there's always one child awake.

These are the bead counters that will go into the counting book. My daughter loves the bead counter page in her quiet book. It's so simple but looks so effective.

Also for the counting book is this shoe page, where little ones can practice tying a bow. My daughter is still at the stage where all she wants to do is try to put her foot into the open shoe, but I'm sure she'll catch on soon.

I love this dog page, which will go into the alphabet book. It's another simple idea that looks really effective. 

Three complete pages out of twenty four... there's still a long way to go! 

Although it's sun hat weather all year round here in Brisbane, after cleaning out my kids' clothes cupboards recently and noticing how much they've both grown in these last few months, I realised that Miss almost 3 needed a new hat.

I bought some of the yellow beach hut fabric last year and used it up in no time making baby hats, pants and shorts. Recently it was all on sale again and I bought some more, as well as the cute hot air balloons design above. My daughter loved it and chose it for her new summer hat. I used this Oliver + S free pattern http://oliverands.com/free-patterns/reversible-bucket-hat/. I found that it's a bit on the small side, so I'd go a size up next time. We'll try it out at the park tomorrow :)

Works in progress: Quiet books (ironing and felt everywhere), finished projects (dinosaur softie and baby in a pouch)

This week I finished the dinosaur softie (thanks mum for the tip on how to get those little feet in using gathering) and the baby in a pouch. 

Cute! See my previous post on where I found the details for these.

I've also been busy cutting out felt shapes in preparation for putting together the new quiet books. All my designs are done, the heat and bond lite arrived in the post and the ironing done. I'm hoping to get the first pages completed this week :)