Sewing tutorial: Quiet Book pages - Clothesline and dress up doll

When I first made this page for my daughter's Quiet Book almost three years ago, I decided to combine a clothesline with dressing dolls. It is a great idea for a velcro page and she has really loved playing with and dressing up the doll.





The clothesline page is made up of felt, ribbon and velcro. The first step is to sew down the velcro and ribbon strips. Cover these with the brown felt strips and sew around the edges to fasten in the sides of the ribbons and velcro and to hold down the clothes line poles. The last step is to sew the grass down over the top.

The doll page is made up of felt, velcro and some embroidery. The grass should go down first. Then attach the body felt. I like to use an adhesive backing (Heat n Bond Lite), made for applique. To use this, trace an outline of the body, iron it onto the felt, cut out the shape around the outline, and then iron it down on the background fabric. The doll will need some hair and I like to give it some underwear. Then attach a sun in the sky. Embroider on eyes and a mouth, or you could use markers to draw them on.

I then sew a square of velcro on the tummy so that the clothing will attach.

I find it a good idea to sew around the edges of the shapes to secure them down so that they withstand repeated pulling when your children are pulling off the clothing.




The clothing can be as plain or as decorative as you choose. I like to keep mine fairly plain. The adhesive applique paper can be helpful again for drawing out the outline of each piece of clothing. Use the body as a guide as you want to cover all of the body and fit the arms and legs. Draw the clothing outlines onto the paper and iron on a neutral colour felt which will serve as backing. Sew on velcro and then iron on the clothing coloured felt. Again, sewing around the edges will make the items last long and withstand all that velcro action.

Part IV: Finished quiet book - Colours/Colors

By coincidence this book turned out to also be an animals book: a blue whale, green frogs, yellow chick, orange fish (goldfish), pink pig and red crab.

The blue page has a whale that unbuttons from the book. It can be removed, and also swiveled around on the button to flip up its tail.

The orange fish can be caught with the magnetic fishing rod and the pink pig finger puppet attaches at the back with velcro.

The green frogs are attached with snap fasteners and are an activity in size matching. The yellow chick lives in an egg that can be opened with a zipper.

The red crab is a velcro matching puzzle of sorts.

See more here:
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/RichesandRoses

And see my other books here:
http://richesandroses.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/part-iii-shapes-quiet-book.html
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

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?

Kids' craft: Toddler Sewing Kit

My earliest memories of sewing are of using scraps of fabric from my mother's sewing to wrap my dolls in new clothes. I feel very lucky to have been taught this useful skill, mostly just through watching and learning, and I would really love if I could pass it on to my own daughter, who is now almost 3 years old. So I started her a sewing kit...

A lot of pieces were bought on Ebay, like these large plastic needles and wooden beads. I used non slip drawer lining from the $2 shop and a quilting frame for sewing practice. Miss almost three loves threading the beads on and has really caught on quickly to how to sew with the needle. The next thing I need to teach her is how to thread the needle :)

I threw in a few miscellaneous items like some velcro, ribbon, zippers and ric rac.

I made these dinosaurs for threading out of craft foam and a hole punch. She loves sewing these.

I was sent this colour chart from an Etsy seller when I made a purchase a while back and picked up the paper tape measure at an Ikea store.

I also included some plastic cotton reels for threading and colour sorting.

Finally, a bulk bag of buttons from the fabric shop. We spend hours sorting these into colour groups :)

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!