Last of the Quiet Books

I have spent my spare time in the last 3 months diligently working on my quiet books. (I have completed a grand total of 5!) The ironing board has taken up semi-permanent residence in the living room, as has the card table, which is covered with fabric markers, 3 feet of felt and 5 books on how to make quiet books. Dan has been oh-so patient with me! I have had a very good time making my books. I really enjoy doing them and I am kind of sad to have to put my stuff away. But I think the time has come.

But first, for those who may care, here are some pictures of pages I haven't put up before:

I like a cute cover. And I thought this picture in a coloring book was SO cute! Plus, this book is going to some boys, so it seemed appropriate.

The signs are all velcroed to the page and can be changed up. I ended up putting an eye hook on the garage to keep the car from falling out all the time.

I finally gave in and did a page with a zipper on it. I fear zippers, so I was really happy that "The Quiet Book Tutor" Blog (link on the right) said she did her zippers by sewing the zipper to the felt and then cutting the slit. Wow! SO much easier! Marian saw this page and informed me that Indians did not decorate their teepees like that. I am glad that she is paying attention in school! (They are studying Indian tribes right now.) Anyway, this was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

I wanted to try a different face. The face in the book for this page is goofy. However, it is nearly impossible to find a picture of a face in silhouette, so I thought I would try this. I decided I like the goofy face better.

I like the red hair better than the blond, and I did a pocket to hold hair stuff.

I took a chance with this one. Usually I only make pages that I know my kids will play with, but the girls told me this was a great page. It was more work than I anticipated, but that's because I had to make my cupcakes. And the oven stumped me on a few things. I guess I'm into the simpler pages!

I really liked this page, but it has some issues. I didn't quite center it properly, and after making it, I found a cuter gumball pattern. Still, I like this. There are 10 gumballs in there, behind plastic and they are numbered 1-10. So you can take the gumballs out and use them for counting.

I think this is just cute. I used the template from a book, but the star fish and jelly fish were borrowed from another QB blog. The fish are from a fish fabric. They all velcro to the page. Snaps would work also, but I hate sewing them!

This was in the Quiet Book Tutor book, but I couldn't understand how to make it. (I'm not that bright unless its all spelled out for me sometimes.) I saw it on someone else's blog and it clicked. On the blog though, she had a snap closure, but the template called for a lock and key. I married the 2 designs of the chest and it needs a lock. Who knew it would be this hard to find a cheap luggage lock?!! Until I find one, the ring is holding in the pirate booty! Oh, and there is a sting there to tie the key to the page, so it won't get lost.

This seemed like a cute, easy design. I had trouble with sewing the yarn on. It was thicker than I expected. I had wanted to go with 6 strands but I didn't think I could sew it on. I do like this one though. Its not so girly as braiding hair. My 9 year son has been enjoying it.

And there you have it; All the pages I have made! And I am done. So let it be written, so let it be done! And now I have to go clean up all my craft supplies and put away my markers and the card table......

Quiet Book #3!

I thought it would be fun to do the LDS themed quiet book. I tried it out and it has been a lot of fun. I get bored doing the same pages and when they are no fun, I don't want to do them anymore, so this was good!

I'm not sure why this came out horizontal, but you can still see. The template had hooks, but I did velcro to close the "Red Sea".

Its a basic lift-the-flap and you can see the people inside. Super easy. I just copied the picture onto the muslin.

The pioneer page was fun, and this is the first time I have used brads. They were better than I expected. Usually I just sew a button on to allow something to move. The wheels turn and the ox velcros to the front of the wagon. I should have put another pioneer themed page across from it, but I don't think that well in advance! So it has the Armor of God there instead.

Again, lack of forward thinking that I didn't write the title up high enough. The accessories velcro on.

I really liked the Jesus picture. The 2 little kids velcro to the page, and I sewed plastic on the faces, so you can put a picture of your own kid inside. The Liahona is suppose to have a compass in the center. You would be surprised how hard it is to find a small flat compass! I'm waiting for mine to arrive, since I had to order it off ebay ($1 for 2 with free shipping!) When it arrives, I will glue the compass to the center. And I will finish coloring it.

Noah's Ark is not new. The Brother of Jared is! The top of the rock is one big velcro piece and the shiny rocks velcro to it, so they can be moved. And the arm moves up and down.

The Brother of Jared picture is from googling the phrase and looking for coloring pages. The arm is made from a foam popsicle stick and is sewed to the page with a button. The ark has a bunch of animals and Noah.

Piggy Bank still needs some coins. I will have 10 coins with the numbers 1-10 on them. Moses goes in the basket and I have a shoelace to tie the basket shut with. Its a little bulky, but fun.

I need a pen and notebook for the pockets. The temple picture again came from googling coloring pages. And again, I didn't think about where I was writing the phrase! Oops. The flowers button on and come off.

Joseph has felt strips in matching colors to snap on. I detest sewing on snaps, and have not yet mastered the non-sewing kind, so this is not yet finished! The other picture is Daniel. I thought it would be more fun and cave-like with the felt flap. Lift it and.....

Picture courtesy of google, and plastic pocket that holds finger puppets of Daniel, a lion (hee hee, I wrote loin first!), and an angel. Someone has run off with my angel puppet, so I need to find it or make another!

Last page is this one. The gifts and baby all velcro to the page.

The bottom line- there were lots of ideas but not a lot pictures of finished books, which is why I'm putting this out there. There weren't a lot of patterns or directions, but it was pretty easy to google a coloring page for a picture I wanted. You can find half of the patterns for my pages at ann f. pritt qb pdf (from idea door).

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Okay, I have been finishing up m books and have a few more pictures for you:

I hadn't wanted to do this picture because it didn't seem to have enough going on. I kind of accidently ended up making it. To make it more interesting, I added the buckle. Joshua informed me that it was not a correct representation. I know. It isn't. However, I think it is more fun than not having it.

See, I want a quiet book with activities. There are LOTS of adorable things out there, but I want something that is going to occupy my kid. I want an activity quiet book. So I had to add the buckle to make me happy. And I ended up making a set of gold plates out of felt and sewing them together. I'm sure there are better and more interesting things, but I'm all out of ideas for now!

Long story, and it took me forever, but I did get the darn snaps done on this page. Ug. I detest snaps. And I should have used pelon on them, but I didn't.

I am still waiting on a mini compass to glue into the center here, but this is the almost-finished product. I think the jewels make it lovely, and I know my kids love anything shiny! The 4 velcro pieces have matching "N, S, E,& W" letters on them.

And I am done. I have finished my books! Okay, except for the darn compass!

Quiet Book #1

Okay, the kids are in bed, Rylee is making a mess with popcorn in the living room and I have a few minutes to myself. So, I will share with you what goes on behind some of the madness that is my compulsion to make quiet books! I have a couple books. Thank you to Ebay and Amazon, I now have 5 of them. I just got one in the mail today, so I can't tell you how helpful it will be. I got most of the patterns from these books though, and from the wealth of blogs out there on the internet. Here are the most fun books I have used:

The Kite and Nose are from this one. And the Christmas Tree. I like a lot of the ideas, and they do a good job explaining how to make the pages. A good book.

This is the book with all the ideas for the quiet book I grew up with. Most of the old school ideas are in here. I like it, but it isn't always clear on HOW you do some of the things. I, of course, am not very crafty, nor am I good at sewing, so they probably assume you know that stuff and I don't. Nice long sentence there! Still, some great ideas, and a lot of them! Plus, I like that it has different activities and you can choose. For example, you have 3 different pages to choose from that involve buttons. That makes it easier to tailor it to your ability and your child's interest.

This one has some fun ideas. The cowboy, Noah's ark, the egg, the traffic pattern.... those are from here. I like the designs, but one or 2 of the pages had me scratching my head. Again, I think they expect you to be smarter than I am to know how to work some of the pages. You can still wing it, or skip it, and it has some really great ideas in it. I recommend all 3 of these if like me, you aren't confident or imaginative.

The next question is, how do I put it together. If you look online, you can find lots of different ways. I like to go with what I know and I grew up with a book made of muslin, and sewn together. I do like the idea of making them to fit into a binder so you can add pages or remove them, but that's more work than I am prepared to do right now. I like muslin because it is inexpensive and I love, love, love that it is sheer enough to trace through. The downside is that it is fragile. I like to use pellon under the places where I'm sewing something to it. So if I am sewing buttons on, I iron a piece of pellon under it to give it more support so the kids don't just rip the button off when they pull. I'm also starting to iron pellon onto the cover and back pages for more support, but the book works fine either way.

I eyeball it and cut 4 (equal sized) long pieces of muslin and fold them into quarters to make 4 pages in a row, like this. When I am done with the 4 pages on each long fabric piece, I fold it in half and sew them together. I end up with 4 pages of 4, with a total of 16 activities.

Now I have 2 pages on front and 2 on the back. (The nose is one of my favorite pages! The nose is made of chain and can be posed. So fun for the kids!)

You can see here that the pages were not cut very straight. As I said, I don't like to measure, and fortunately, this is a very forgiving medium! So if my pages are glaringly not straight, its not a big deal.

And this bottom one is the front and back covers. I get all the pages together, and I stack them in the order I most like and sew a line down the center between the 2 pages to make the book. This does mean that the only pages I coordinate to be together is the center one. I do not plan ahead for particular pages to face each other, although most people seem to.

I have gotten smarter and now I wait till I've sewed it together before using the fabric paint. The paint doesn't iron well, so it gets tricky when putting things together if I have already used it.

When do I have time? Well, I don't. Fortunately, Dan has let me take over a corner of the living room and the ironing board, sewing machine and card table are now semi-permanent fixtures. Whenever I have 10 minutes, I can sit down and work on something, since all of my supplies are strewn all over the table and ironing board. I work on them when Rylee is napping or after bedtime, or whenever I can! Plus, I do very little planning or measuring, so I just dive right into work.

I love it because I can see progress and feel like I have accomplished something. Its not like being the mom, where it is always a work on progress. I can see the end and finish something! Dishes, laundry, dinner- all these thing have to be done over and over again. But this, this quiet book making, I can do it, and I can finish it and I can feel like I have completed something that I won't have to do again tomorrow.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

And stay tuned, because I'll be posting the books that Marian has made soon.

Quiet Book #2

Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't done Quiet Book #1 yet. I didn't download those pictures yet. But I did get this one done. I made this one for my Friend's daughter who is turning one. I wanted a special present, and my friend is the most fabulous person and she's always, always there to watch the kids when I need her. Plus she is the nicest person ever. So, I wanted to do something special for her daughter. That, and I love making Quiet Books!

Front cover. I really like the sparkly paint! Oh, to make them, I know there are 100 different ways to do it and 100 different fabrics to use. I refuse to measure. Too much work. I buy a yard or 2 of muslin and eyeball it. I cut it to be about the size I want. I'll show you more when (er, if!) I get Quiet Book #1 posted.

The nesting hen and the apple tree. The apple tree is tradition now and must be included!

I did velcro since I detest sewing snaps. And I do like the lift flap on the barn. I just glued the dog inside the barn door.

I decided I love the lift flaps on the houses. I put pictures of her family on the house. I like the roof flap a lot, that's her dog in there! And the girl has yarn hair to braid or whatever. I wish had made it longer. Still, it was easier than I thought it would be and I think it came out cute.

The chick in the egg and the Jack-o-Lantern.

The kids had a great time helping me t cut out eyes and mouths and noses for this pumpkin. The pumpkin and the face parts are felt, so they stick to each other. I like that! And the spare parts fit inside.

This mailbox was so cute. It was easy to do too. Well, once I got the pattern printed, it was easy. I couldn't eyeball this one at all!

An envelope will fit inside the mailbox, so you can write letters and mail them off. hee hee hee.

I thought these hula girls were so doggone cute! I traced them in a coloring book. That's why I love the muslin! I found this adorable ribbon and used it for skirts. My biggest trouble was the fact that in the coloring book, the girls had dressed on, so I had to wing it on the legs and I didn't do such a great job. But the skirts are adorable, so who cares! The vase I like because the flowers come out to play with. I did make it a bit too big though.

The princess was also from a coloring book. And the jewels are the first time I used adhesive backed velcro. It worked quite well! I also have gained a testimony of heat-bond and used that on the velcro to stick the jewels to. The pieces were so small, I wasn't sure there'd be enough to stitch on. That may not have made sense. All you need to know is, it was simple and fun! And it is cute.

See, cute! And the stop light is a fun one I like a lot.

This is the first time I tried the garden. I saw it on a blog online and loved it. I had some trouble figuring out what kinds of veggies grow underground. I do know that potatoes do not have green stems like carrots but that's what I had!

I like the Kangaroo and the baby joey that comes out of her pocket. I wish I had a pattern for a full joey, not just his head, but I'm not good enough to try to freehand that!

And the back came out super-cute! I tried this purse for the first time and it looks good. Even more fun is that you can put fun things in it. Open the button closure and see what's inside!

There is a hair clip, a bead bracelet I made and I made a lipstick out of felt. It came out better than I expected. I also made some felt money which was really cute.

So that's what I have done for my friend's daughter. I love it and may have to make another one!! If you want to know how I did anything specific, ask me and I'll let you know!

Top 10 Excuses

Its been what, a week since I blogged? Since I like to post 2-3 times a week, that's a bit of time off for me. I know when my family and friends don't blog for a week, I miss them. In case you have missed me, let me give you my top 10 excuses for why I have not blogged:

1. I HAVE blogged. I just did them all in my head and they never actually got written down.

2. I get to deal with a lot of things and currently, Joshua is having issues with the mysterious case of the hives. He has been breaking out in them every evening. I guess he is allergic to bedtime. Actually, my best guess is an allergy to the new laundry detergent, but he sure is itchy all the time. Here is a picture of what he looked like last night:

3. Rylee has been having some intestinal issues that have given her such diaper rash that it has blistered and currently looks like raw hamburger. Poor kid is not happy about that. I changed 6 poopy diapers on her yesterday and it looks so painful. To make things worse, (or perhaps the cause?) she is working on her first molars. She has 2 painful swollen gums that feel like squishy blisters. Poor kid.

4. I'm tired. Rylee's teeth growing is a painful process and she is waking up a lot and when she does fall asleep, she expects me to be her human pacifier, and when I say no, she wakes up and cries. Not much fun.

5. I am the mom. I have lots to do and lots I want to do. Good thing I have cute kids!

6. Callie is sick. She's been a little off since Friday with a fever off and on. She went to school yesterday, because she'd been fever-free since Sunday. Unfortunately she came home from school burning up. Aargh. She is quite roasty-toasty today, so she's home from school curled up in a nest of cushions. She's a good sick kid.

7. I discovered a series of books. Darn Goodreads! One of my friends had reviewed a book on there called "Gone" by Michael Grant and I had to check it out at the library. I have been completely sucked into it and I am half way through the sequel. I really hope it isn't a trilogy, since I cannot afford to neglect everything much longer!

8. Halloween is coming. The kids must go through the box 500 times to decide what they want to be and to see how they will look in it. Plus, I have some duties to do before the ward Trunk or Treat. I have done about half of what I need to, but I still need to set aside an hour or 2 to get it all done. Here is Rylee, trying on Callie's Cat ears.

9. I'm unmotivated. The effort of kicking Delaney, or Joshua off the computer and sitting down to write is too much work for the paltry thoughts I have.

10. I am still in Quiet Book Heaven! I now have acquired the coveted pattern book (thank you Ebay!!) and I am almost done with Camden's Christmas present! It is so fun and so darn cute, if I may say so myself! Check out 2 of my favorite pages:
I like the Noah's Ark a lot. There is a plastic piece on the top of the boat so you can set the animals in it. That's where Noah and the horse and giraffe are. The animals all fit into the pocket of the ark. The skink and the hippo are my favorite animals! (The fish are just for fun and do not come up off the page.)

I think the house is adorable. Okay, not that it is well done, but because the door and 2 upstairs windows open. What is behind them?

SO cute! We'll leave the upstairs windows as a surprise for Miranda!

And those are my excuses.