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 :)

Sewing tutorial: Pre-walker boots

1. Print and cut out pattern.
2. For each shoe cut sole, top and side in main fabric, lining fabric and interfacing.
3. Iron interfacing onto the wrong side of the main fabric.







4. With wrong sides together, baste the sole main and lining pieces together.

5. With right sides together sew around the curved edge of the side and flat edge of the top.


6. Turn the side out the right way and top stitch along the curved edge. Sew 1cm in from the edge.

7. Turn the top out the right way and top stitch along the straight edge.




8. Put the shoe together. With the main fabric together, line up the centre back of the sole and centre bottom of the sides. Sew from the centre back in one direction, then starting again at the centre back, sew the other direction.







9. Match the centre of the top flap with the front centre of the sole and attache, sewing from the centre out in one direction, then in the other.







10. Turn the shoe out the right way. Attach eyelets evenly to the inner edges of the sides. Thread with short length of ribbon or cord.

Spring is near

Continuing on with trying to be crafty with Mia, we tried out threading with the coloured pasta. Although difficult still, Mia loved sitting together and threading. Then she just went mad for pouring and putting coloured pasta all over the place. She loved it and could have played for hours like this.

Then we made a sheep. Mia's a huge fan of sticking - I think her childcare centre has been teaching them about sticky stuff recently. We kept to using clear contact because it's just so easy and I can sit back and watch her create without worrying that she's going to eat any glue.

And then a Father's Day present. I'd seen this idea months ago on Pinterest and thought it was very cute. So we made some homemade paints again with water, cornflour and food colouring. I thought I'd try this recipe and see if it lasted longer than the last time we made paints - the last recipe had a lot of sugar in it too - but it lasted much the same time. Actually I think I prefer the paint with sugar in it, because some of this crumbled and fell off when it was dry.

Finally I finished the smaller version of the quiet book - these ones have been made as gifts and for sale. The hours and hours of work that goes into one of these babies can never be set at a price that anyone's willing to pay, so I tried to keep it simple and limited myself to 6 activity pages - the best six. These have been Mia's favourites so far in her book.

            

Quiet book cover

Monkey with snap fasteners

      

Tie the shoe

Barn and animal finger puppets

                    

       

Count the beads

Tent, sleeping bag and doll with zippers

       

Mr Potato head with velcro

Pocket for all the pieces, plus some pieces for a Mrs Potato Head 

     

And some sewing for our baby who's now only 10 weeks away - a hanging wall storage and some wall art for above the cot.

I quilted the back section of the wall hanging and then made the pockets with square corners, lined with a very stiff interfacing. I'm still not sure if the pockets will sag after a while, especially if they're not stuffed full at the bottoms and have heavy stuff in them.

I found the idea for this one thanks to Martha Stewart, although the original idea was three larger frames. I bought a cheap white frame and a bunch of scrapbooking card stock and chose my book: Dr Seuss' Oh the Places You'll Go! The finished product looked quite effective - I especially like the black section with white writing and the orange giraffe. It stands out a lot more than the other two sections.

I made this one a while back, but never photographed it until now. I had made one as a birthday gift for a friend's baby, and had a second shirt so I thought I'd make one for Mia also. It turned out really cute and is an easy way to brighten up a plain t-shirt. I used heat and bond paper to attach the circles to the t-shirt fabric and then just sewed a tight zig zag stitch around each one to secure it on.

The Quiet Book

In June we're going to Germany so that Mia can meet her family on her daddy's side. Two adults and a 19-month old on a plane full of people for a total of 20 plus hours. Not really anyone's idea of a holiday, but I'm hoping that preparation is the key. I did some reading about how to keep a toddler occupied while travelling and found some great ideas about activity bags and quiet books. Although most ideas in quiet books are aimed at children who are slightly older, I thought I'd give one a go in the hope that she (and us, and the rest of the passengers on the plane) might get some benefit out of it. 

Planning the quiet book was loads of fun. As was drawing the designs and playing with a pile of coloured felt. I decided on 12 activities in the end and bought a few metres of calico, some light fusible interfacing, felt in a bunch of colours, and some fusible webbing used for applique. 

I cut out rectangles of calico in the size I wanted (27cm by 31cm) and backed each piece with interfacing slightly smaller so that the seams won't be too bulky when I put together the pages. I wanted to interface each page to make the pages sturdier, especially when sewing the felt pieces on.

Then I worked page by page, drawing the designs in reverse on the iron on applique webbing. This has also helped to make things a lot sturdier, and the finished product a lot neater. As I don't want to risk any of the felt pieces falling off, I've sewed around each, but the applique webbing just gives it a nicer finish.

Once I'd collected all the materials for the pages and done some ironing on, I tackled the barn page. I got inspiration and a pattern from  http://servingpinklemonade.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/quiet-book.html  and used red, white and brown felt, ironing on each piece and then reinforcing by sewing around them. I'd knitted the finger puppets ages ago and never done anything with them and figured they were perfect for the barn. 

Next I made the potato heads. I took some ideas from http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2010/05/mr-potato-head.html. Shown here is Mrs Potato Head, and I also made accessories for Mr which fit to the same potato. All of the removable pieces are double sided to make them more durable

.The shoe came next... using ideas from http://quietbook.blogspot.com.au/ 2010/11/page-24-tie-my-shoe.html

The fishing page was fun... I took ideas from  http://shannonmakesstuff.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/quiet-book-page-fishing-with-peter.html (leaving the religious stuff out). I wanted something simple where the fish would stay in the water, but also be relatively easy enough to catch. I used some tiny little magnets from a craft shop and they work well as long as I pull the fish out a little before going fishing.

The monkey and balloons page is for colour matching and I thought I'd stray from velcro and use some snap fasteners. In hindsight though, I think they'll be hard for Mia's little fingers to handle - they take quite a bit of force to pull apart. The idea for this page came from http://servingpinklemonade.blogspot.com.au /2011/01/quiet-book.html. Love love love the monkey!

The idea for this page came from http://www.sugarbeecrafts.com/2010/08/quiet-book-feature.html. I had so much fun making the dolls and clothes. I bought some tiny little pegs, which Mia will love someday, but for now they're just a bit too small to let her play with so I backed the clothes with velcro and sewed a strip of velcro under each line on the clothesline. The velcro is used anyway to stick the clothes onto the dolls.

The last page I finished was this tent page with zippers. One zipper is used for the sleeping bag (where the doll can easily be removed), and another for the tent. 

Still to come are the dog/buckle page, flowers/buttons page, letter and shape matching, and bead counting page and the grand finale of putting the whole thing together into a tidy little book!

Stay tuned!