Quiet books
My quiet book for Isaac is finally finished! It took a long time but it's definitely worth it, I love how it's turned out.
So, here we go with the tutorial :)
Before starting your quiet book decide what size you would like to make the pages so that all the pages are the same size! Standard size is 9" square. It is also a good idea to decide how you will bind your pages before you begin; if you choose to bind them down one edge you may need to leave extra space for your binding. There are a few options when it comes to binding - you could sew button holes into your pages and thread string or ribbon through it to hold all of your pages together, or use metal rings through these button holes. Alternatively, you could join your pages at the edge like a traditional book, or use the method I did of sewing the finished pages onto a long piece of fabric in double page spreads, stacking these together and sewing down the middle -more details on how I did this will be coming further down the post :)
You might also want to decide how many pages and what you would like to do on each page at this stage, but you don't need to. The more pages you have, the thicker the book, so bear this in mind when you are considering how to join the pages. You also want to have an age in mind for your book before you start making pages - Isaac is too young yet to engage with his book but I have included pages I hope he'll be able to use by the time he's about one. For now, I've avoided pages with letter or number matching but an older child might enjoy these (another book to make later perhaps!). Most of the page design ideas came from Pinterest (big surprise there), here's a run down of the pages I made:
Page 1
When applying the poppers, all segments have female poppers and all the base circles have two male poppers so that they are fully mix and match. I drew around a circle to make sure all the shapes are the same size. For the segments, I put the popper on first and sewed the detailing pieces of felt over the top to hide the popper in the final design.
Educationally, this page can spark discussions around colour recognition, fruit names, and finding similarities and differences in patterns (skills required for reading). All of the pages with poppers also encourage the development of fine motor skills.
Page 2
This page was my husband's original idea :) match the animal tail to the correct bum!
(The cow tail is upstairs right now because I was finishing it off while Isaac was playing up there)
I decided on four animals with unique tails - a rabbit, pig, fox and cow. I made their bodies first - all the same shape so that all the tails fit the same on each animal. I sewed on heads and feet (and patches and udder for the cow) to distinguish the animals and added male poppers to each. To strengthen the tails I made them doubel thickness (two pieces of felt blanket stitched together), which also meant I could hide the popper between the two layers. I considered using wool for the cows tail and cotton wool for the rabbit but felt is easier to work with!
Page 3
Animal arm and leg match up.
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This one is a bit of fun and one of the first pages I made. If I did it again, I'd probably double the felt on the limbs to hide the poppers. I wanted to feature a cat because I'm a cat lover and this one is semi-modelled on our family cat. I decided to pair it with an owl because the arms and legs are quite different to the cat's and it's fairly easy to draw!
Page 4
Build a rainbow!
This page was my own design inspired by people around me sharing the love for the stacking Grims rainbow toys. The rainbow simultaneously invites colour learning and teaches size awareness; it's a little like those stacking ring toys. The colours stack on top of one another attaching with velcro at the same place on each colour, so they can be placed in any order (bar the red which is sewn on and the purple which only has velcro on one side) but the bigger ones will hide the smaller ones. The sun and raincloud above invite discussion about weather and how rainbows come about.
Page 5 + 6
Five little ducks.
Five little ducks is one of my favourite songs to sing with Isaac; we can sing it together using this page and move the ducks to the pond as they swim away and then back to Mama duck at the end. As Isaac learns the song and the tune he can sing the song (with or without words!) and move the ducks, beginning to learn the principles of counting like one to one correspondence and maybe eventually even counting to five.
I cut out the pond and added the poppers, then sewed it to the sand coloured square, and eventualled added felt pond weeds and a lilypad. On the other page, I sewed Mama duck down, added some clouds I had left over from my rainbow page, and sewed the lettering. Mama duck actually says Quack Quack Quack Quack but sewing lettering is a pain in the bum so I figured two quacks would do the job! I made a paper template for the ducks and double layered them to hide their poppers.
Page 7
Feed the animals
Again this was one of the first pages I made and in hindsight I would have put fewer animals per page so the food is a little bigger for little hands to hold, but nevermind. There are six animals and six foods; a dog and bone, frog and fly, mouse and cheese, monkey and banana, rabbit and carrot and a cat and fish. Each food is on a ribbon which is sewn onto the edge of the page - little foods seemed too easy to lose. They are also doubled to make them stronger.
Page 8
Shape matching snail shells
Another pattern matching page to encourage skills for early readers with the bonus of introducing shape names. Also another page where the pieces are a little smaller than I'd have liked them to be. I think I was slightly ambitious with how many snails I could fit on one page and maybe should have done this one as a double page spread. The shells are sewn on and the shape to match it to is again doubled for strength and popper hiding, and done in the same colour to make it a little easier.
Page 9
Pencil colours
I made a simple paper template for the pencils to make them all the same colour, added the peach on top and blanket stitched the edges, doubled. I cut the colour names from black felt but could have also sewn the lettering. I made a paper template for the pencil pot just slightly larger than the pencil and machine sewed these on, leaving the tops open.
Page 10
Bug hunt!
Open out your lengths of fabric (because they were folded at one edge when you cut them), pin all 4 pages on and sew. This is the stage at which you need to bear in mind the order you want your pages in.
When your pages are attached, fold the long piece in half with the pages on the inside. Sew the two long edges and turn it back the correct way - your seam is now hidden inside. Add some thin wadding inside and sew up the remaining short edge, folding in a hem. The thicker the wadding, the thicker the book; thicker wadding may become unmanageable if you have a lot of pages to your book.
Ta da! One complete quiet book. Takes a lot of time but worth it in the end. I'm going to use the technique I've learned to make a wordless storybook with puppets that Isaac can use to play out fairytales and later verbally tell the stories.
Happy Sewing, Mamas!
So, here we go with the tutorial :)
Before starting your quiet book decide what size you would like to make the pages so that all the pages are the same size! Standard size is 9" square. It is also a good idea to decide how you will bind your pages before you begin; if you choose to bind them down one edge you may need to leave extra space for your binding. There are a few options when it comes to binding - you could sew button holes into your pages and thread string or ribbon through it to hold all of your pages together, or use metal rings through these button holes. Alternatively, you could join your pages at the edge like a traditional book, or use the method I did of sewing the finished pages onto a long piece of fabric in double page spreads, stacking these together and sewing down the middle -more details on how I did this will be coming further down the post :)
You might also want to decide how many pages and what you would like to do on each page at this stage, but you don't need to. The more pages you have, the thicker the book, so bear this in mind when you are considering how to join the pages. You also want to have an age in mind for your book before you start making pages - Isaac is too young yet to engage with his book but I have included pages I hope he'll be able to use by the time he's about one. For now, I've avoided pages with letter or number matching but an older child might enjoy these (another book to make later perhaps!). Most of the page design ideas came from Pinterest (big surprise there), here's a run down of the pages I made:
Page 1
This is a fruit matching page featuring an orange, lemon, kiwi and watermelon. I tried to use fruits with interesting segments and used all circular fruits so Isaac can mix and match the halves - all of the pieces have a popper on the back (search KAM poppers, easy to apply with no sewing required and child safety tested) and underneath each fruit is a circle of the matching colour to fix it to:
Educationally, this page can spark discussions around colour recognition, fruit names, and finding similarities and differences in patterns (skills required for reading). All of the pages with poppers also encourage the development of fine motor skills.
Page 2
This page was my husband's original idea :) match the animal tail to the correct bum!
I decided on four animals with unique tails - a rabbit, pig, fox and cow. I made their bodies first - all the same shape so that all the tails fit the same on each animal. I sewed on heads and feet (and patches and udder for the cow) to distinguish the animals and added male poppers to each. To strengthen the tails I made them doubel thickness (two pieces of felt blanket stitched together), which also meant I could hide the popper between the two layers. I considered using wool for the cows tail and cotton wool for the rabbit but felt is easier to work with!
Page 3
Animal arm and leg match up.
This one is a bit of fun and one of the first pages I made. If I did it again, I'd probably double the felt on the limbs to hide the poppers. I wanted to feature a cat because I'm a cat lover and this one is semi-modelled on our family cat. I decided to pair it with an owl because the arms and legs are quite different to the cat's and it's fairly easy to draw!
Page 4
Build a rainbow!
This page was my own design inspired by people around me sharing the love for the stacking Grims rainbow toys. The rainbow simultaneously invites colour learning and teaches size awareness; it's a little like those stacking ring toys. The colours stack on top of one another attaching with velcro at the same place on each colour, so they can be placed in any order (bar the red which is sewn on and the purple which only has velcro on one side) but the bigger ones will hide the smaller ones. The sun and raincloud above invite discussion about weather and how rainbows come about.
Page 5 + 6
Five little ducks.
Five little ducks is one of my favourite songs to sing with Isaac; we can sing it together using this page and move the ducks to the pond as they swim away and then back to Mama duck at the end. As Isaac learns the song and the tune he can sing the song (with or without words!) and move the ducks, beginning to learn the principles of counting like one to one correspondence and maybe eventually even counting to five.
I cut out the pond and added the poppers, then sewed it to the sand coloured square, and eventualled added felt pond weeds and a lilypad. On the other page, I sewed Mama duck down, added some clouds I had left over from my rainbow page, and sewed the lettering. Mama duck actually says Quack Quack Quack Quack but sewing lettering is a pain in the bum so I figured two quacks would do the job! I made a paper template for the ducks and double layered them to hide their poppers.
Page 7
Feed the animals
Again this was one of the first pages I made and in hindsight I would have put fewer animals per page so the food is a little bigger for little hands to hold, but nevermind. There are six animals and six foods; a dog and bone, frog and fly, mouse and cheese, monkey and banana, rabbit and carrot and a cat and fish. Each food is on a ribbon which is sewn onto the edge of the page - little foods seemed too easy to lose. They are also doubled to make them stronger.
Page 8
Shape matching snail shells
Another pattern matching page to encourage skills for early readers with the bonus of introducing shape names. Also another page where the pieces are a little smaller than I'd have liked them to be. I think I was slightly ambitious with how many snails I could fit on one page and maybe should have done this one as a double page spread. The shells are sewn on and the shape to match it to is again doubled for strength and popper hiding, and done in the same colour to make it a little easier.
Page 9
Pencil colours
Page 10
Bug hunt!
This page was a lot of fun to make. I cut a sheet of green felt into 6 long strips, then cut fringe into it most of the way down. I sewed these onto the page just along the bottom of each piece. Next, I made my minibeasts and flowers from felt and added them in amongst the grass. To make sure it wasn't too easy, I sewed a few of the strands of grass down so that each layer can't be peeled back all as one. I made a magnifying glass from two layers of white felt and glued a sheet of acetate between them for the 'glass' using bookbinding glue. I reinforced the handle with a lollystick to stop it from flopping.
Binding the book
I hemmed all of my 9" squares first, so when I came to bind the book I had little room left for a spine. I placed two pages side by side on a piece of fabric that was folded double, leaving space all around for a hem and extra space in the middle for the spine of the book. Then I cut this out and used it as a template to cut out more for the number of pages I needed. Each piece allows for 4 pages. I needed 3 for my 10 page book including a front and back cover.
Open out your lengths of fabric (because they were folded at one edge when you cut them), pin all 4 pages on and sew. This is the stage at which you need to bear in mind the order you want your pages in.
When your pages are attached, fold the long piece in half with the pages on the inside. Sew the two long edges and turn it back the correct way - your seam is now hidden inside. Add some thin wadding inside and sew up the remaining short edge, folding in a hem. The thicker the wadding, the thicker the book; thicker wadding may become unmanageable if you have a lot of pages to your book.
I chose to sew my front cover pieces straight on to the front, so had to do this before I assembled the front and back cover.
Lay the completed pages atop one another and open the book to the centre page. Sew up and down the centre seem a few times to secure all the pages in your book. This will also keep your wadding in place inside your pages.
Happy Sewing, Mamas!
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