Sewing Tutorial: Quiet Book page - Old McDonald had a barn and some finger puppets

The barn page is page three of my Quiet Book. I adapted the idea from the template on Homemade By Jill (http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com.au/2009/07/quiet-book-templates.html).

STEP ONE
You will need red, white and brown felt. Draw each shape on the transfer paper - red barn, brown window, white stripes and two brown rectangles the size of the barn doors. Iron the paper onto the felt and cut out the shapes. Cut between the doors and fold them back. Iron on the brown rectangles to the back of the doors. Peel off the rest of the paper, leaving the adhesive on the back of the shapes. Iron shapes onto the page fabric, starting with the red barn, then the brown window and finally the white stripes.






STEP TWO
Cut out the finger puppet shapes. Fasten on the noses and cow spots. Embroider some eyes on all and nostrils on the pigs. I usually fasten down each piece by sewing a top stitch so that it doesn't fall off. Sew the ears, horns etc onto the back piece of each finger puppet and then sew the fronts and backs together.





STEP THREE
Sew top stitch around each piece of the barn and white edging to be sure it does not come off. Cut another piece of brown felt to fit inside the doors and hold the finger puppets in place.Sew it down on the sides and bottom.

Done!

Put it aside and get ready to prepare the next pages!

Sewing Tutorial: Kids dress up ideas - construction vest

This pattern fits a 2-4 year old.

You will need:

Orange polycotton (I may have used slightly more than half a meter).

Grey felt

Thread

STEP ONE

Print out the paper pattern. It will print as two A4 pieces and need to be joined with tape to make one A3 sized piece. Then cut out the pattern shape.

STEP TWO

The outside line (centre back) should placed on the fold and one piece cut to make the back. Then follow the inner line and cut two pieces to form the front. You will also need to cut the grey felt in strips 2-3cm wide.

STEP THREE

Sew the grey felt strips onto the orange vest pieces in the position indicated on the pattern. Then sew together at the shoulders and down the sides.

STEP FOUR

Cut out strips of orange 4cm wide on the diagonal and make bias binding. That is, fold over in half lengthwise and iron flat and then fold the edges in to the centre and iron flat again. Sew this binding along all raw edges. 

And 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: The easiest 10-minute stretch pants for kids

It is March here in Brisbane and the weather should soon be cooling down again after a long and very hot summer. Being such a temperate climate though, it never really gets "cold" here, especially during the day, so some light long pants are perfect for little kids who are always on the move.

Last year I made two pairs of these simple and cute little pantsfor my son and he has worn them more than any other item of clothing he owns! Perfect for active play at the park or at childcare and so comfy for daytime nap time. Best thing is that they are so easy to make.

STEP ONE

If you have used any of my other sewing tutorials, you will know that I like to keep them as simple as possible. For pants, that means they are made out of two pieces of fabric - one for each leg. So take a pair of existing pants/shorts, and your stretch fabric folded in half. Place the side of the pants along the folded edge and cut out one leg, remembering to add in seam allowances for the inner leg, centre and waistband - 1.5cm should be plenty, although for the waistband you will want to leave about 2cm depending on the width of your waist elastic.

You can see pictures on my other pants tutorials that show how this one leg is cut out. There is also a printable pattern on that page for the dinosaur pants, which will work for you if you do not have any good fitting pants to use as a guide.

STEP TWO

Take one of the legs and fold the fabric so that the right sides are together. Sew up along the inner leg to the groin and stop. Then do the same for the other leg.

STEP THREE

Keep your two legs right sides together and join the centres together - front centre and back centre - from the waist down to the groin.

STEP FOUR

The beauty of knit fabric is that it doesn't fray. This means that you're already almost finished! Unless you want a more finished look, you will not need to hem the ankle edges, and the waist band will only need to be folded over once.

So fold the waist band over about 2cm and pin along the seam edge. Sew, leaving a gap of about 2cm. 

STEP FIVE

Measure your child's waist with the elastic you plan to use, pulling it as tight as you would like it to be with the pants on. Cut it off, allowing an extra 2cm for seams and thread it through the waistband. Attach a safety pin to one end and use that to thread it through the band. Sew the two ends of the elastic together until secure, then close off the waistband by sewing the gap closed.

You are now finished! You could vary these by adding pockets or using a tie waist if you like. See my tutorial for adding pockets here.

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!

 

Sewing Tutorial: Preparing to make your first Quiet Book

For my first Quiet Book was to make my daughter a special toy that would keep her occupied on the long flights from Brisbane, Australia to Frankfurt, Germany. In the end we didn't end up taking it with us, as it contained too many pages, too many small pieces and was a little overwhelming for her when she was little Miss 19 months old.

It was beautifully made with lots of love and we play with a lot now, but my biggest advice would be to keep it simple. I couldn't narrow down the pages I wanted to include, so I just kept adding page after page to the plan until it became 14 pages of activities. Stick to 6 or 8 activity pages all up. It will be enough.

Since that time, I've made dozens of them to sell and I've perfected and simplified my method. I plan to share this method with you step by step here, starting in this blog post with the first stage - the planning and preparations.

1. DECIDE ON FABRICS

I make all of my quiet books from calico cotton, cotton print and felt. I find that the calico is heavy enough to last, and felt is easy to work with because it doesn't require edging. I use a cotton print fabric for the covers.

I like to join my pages together with binder rings. It means sewing just two buttonholes in each page, looks neat, and allows you to add and exchange pages when you want to.

2. PLAN OUT A THEME, DECIDE ON ACTIVITIES

My most popular quiet book is an unthemed one, but I have also designed and made counting quiet books, alphabet ones, colour books, and shape quiet books.

I like to vary the activities on each page and have included: size matching, colour matching, counting, tying shoes or bows, buckles, zips, magnet fishing, velcro, studs, buttons, finger puppets and more.

My suggestion is to get on Pinterest and explore ideas until you have picked your top 10, then narrow it down some more.

3. BUY YOUR MATERIALS

The costs can add up quickly. Check out dollar stores for things like zippers, buttons, felt packs and other supplies. EBay is one of my favourite places to shop for buckles, buttons, velcro, magnets, snaps, ribbons and beads. Buying bulk packs of calico can also help you save.

4. CUTTING OUT

First, decide on size. I used to make my books quite large, but slowly they've become smaller. My ideal size is 18cm by 20cm.

You will need to allow for seams. I like to allow 1cm on each side, so for a finished size of 18cm by 20cm, I would need to cut out a piece 20cm by 22cm. If I am making six activity pages, I would cut out eight of these to allow for two extra, one for inside the front cover and one for inside the back cover.

Then you will cut out another two pieces of the same size for the outside of the front and back covers. Choose a vibrant cotton print fabric for these.

I sometimes choose to line each piece of fabric with a light iron on interfacing. This will depend on the weight of the fabrics that you are working with. If they are quite light, the interfacing will make it easier to sew on the felt pieces later. If the fabrics are heavier, you may be able to skip this step. If you decide to use interfacing, cut it out the same size as your ideal finished book size (in my case this would be 18cm by 20cm) and iron it on close to the centre of each fabric piece before going any further.

5. MAKING THE FELT PIECES

I've tried a few different ways to do this, but I always come back to using Heat n Bond Lite Iron on applique paper, or a similar product.

You can draw your design directly onto the paper, iron it onto the felt, cut it out, peel off the paper to leave the adhesive backing and then iron the felt piece onto your calico fabric. Once you have ironed the felt pieces onto your main fabric it is a good idea to sew around each piece to ensure it stays attached to the fabric. The adhesive applique paper can lose some of its effectiveness after a while.

In my next blog post, I'll be sharing a pattern for a colour matching page featuring a monkey holding four balloons. I'll also explain the full process for putting together the page.

Stay tuned!

 

 

Sewing Tutorial: Easy baby pants variation

We love the easy baby pants at our house. Mr 2 wore these bright dinosaur pants back when he was a baby. What a welcome change they make from the navy blue/khaki options in a lot of the stores here in the cooler months!



A year later, I made him another pair. This time I wanted to trim them with pockets and a cuff.

SEWING TUTORIAL

1. Cut out pant pieces from the original pattern (http://richesandroses.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/sewing-tutorial-easy-baby-pants.html).

2. Decide how big you want your pockets. I wanted pockets to be about 10cm by 10cm when finished. Double the length and cut a rectangle. My rectangle was 12cm by 22cm. (adding in a little for seam allowances). I wanted two pockets (one on each leg), so I cut out two of these from contrasting robot print cotton fabric.

3. Fold the pocket fabric in half length ways, right sides together. Sew around the edges, leaving a 2cm gap to turn the pocket out the right way.

4. Turn pockets out the right way and iron flat.

5. Pin pockets in position. I put mine in the middle of the leg piece, by folding the piece in half in one direction and then in half again the other way, finding the centre point. Sew around the side and bottom edges of the pocket, close to the edges.

6. Cut out a 10cm strip of the contrasting fabric to make the cuffs.

7. Fold the fabric in half lengthways and iron flat. Fold the edges into the centre and iron flat again. Place the bottom edge of the leg piece between the folded length of contrast fabric. Sew it down along the top edge, close to the edge.

8. Now follow the instructions on the original blog post (http://richesandroses.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/sewing-tutorial-easy-baby-pants.html) to finish the pants.

VOILA!