Making Quiet Books

Last fall I became fascinated with quiet books as posts and pins about them crossed my path. As Christmastime drew near, I decided to make a quiet book for one of my toddler nephews. I also wanted to make one for my other toddler nephew but already had a gift picked out for him. So I enlisted the help of my sister Alice. She hadn't decided on a gift for that nephew yet, so she made one for him. So, during December I made one quiet book and helped with another.

Pinterest contained a treasure trove of ideas. My starting point came from a wonderful blog post on Life With My Littles. She made an awesome book for her son, and I liked many of her pages. Scouring Pinterest, I found other ideas I liked. One day Alice and I sat down and decided what pages we wanted to do for our books. We decided to simplify things, forgoing felt, buttons, and other more difficult sewing procedures. 

Then I started gathering supplies. I already had fabric markers from the baby shower I threw for a sister-in-law in October. It took multiple trips to various stores (two Walmarts, a college bookstore, and a Michael's) to find all the necessary supplies, but eventually I found what I needed: felt (a whole rainbow of colors), eyelets, eyelet tool/smasher, and binder rings. (Note: Never go to a college bookstore to buy some small thing at the end of the semester. My husband showed me where the binder rings were and went off to his final. An hour later and a couple dollars poorer, I finally had two sets of binder rings. Luckily the person next to me also had only a small purchase, so I didn't feel like I was in it alone. If only the other register had been working...)

Eyelet tool/smasher and eyelets.

I printed some templates from various blogs (see below for specific links). After searching for tracing paper I had apparently imagined I owned, I borrowed some from my brother. I traced the patterns for me and Alice, cut out the pieces, pinned my pieces to felt, and cut them out. Watching Polar Express and talking with family kept this process from becoming tedious.

Then it was time for more planning—deciding what order to put the pages in, how to create pockets for the pieces, etc. We decided to drop a few pages each. The reality of how much time it would take to make these books was beginning to sink in.

Plan in mind, I packed up my supplies and headed over to my family's house. I used their sewing machine and thread to sew the pieces on. Sewing machines and I tend to have a love-hate relationship (mostly hate since I frequently run into problems while trying to do what I think should be quite simple). This left me quite surprised by how smoothly the sewing went with this project. The only real trouble came while sewing around the leaves on the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom pages. The places where the sewing machine caught left bunches of loose thread, not a good thing for a toddler's book. I'd recently learned about iron-on backing and thought that would be the perfect solution. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any at the store. Luckily, my mom got me some from a family friend. And that fixed the problem of the loose threads. 

Without Backing

With Backing

While tracking down iron-on backing, I tackled the next challenge of the project: creating holes where the eyelets would go. Struck by a hopefully brilliant idea, I went in search of three-ring hole punch I'd used in high school and college. Returning triumphantly with hole punch in hand, I took a page, centered it over the holes, and pushed down, hard. Then I pressed hard on each hole. Removing the felt, I found that it had cut partway through the felt and left a circle indention where it hadn't cut through. It would work. Using cloth scissors, I cut the hole completely out and admired my work. It wasn't perfect, but I was still pleased. Then it was just rinse and repeat, or in this case, line up, push until your fingers hurt, remove felt, cut out holes, repeat.

Hole punch I used. 

Once I had the holes cut out, it was time to learn how to use the eyelet tool/smasher. To supplement the tools I'd bought, my youngest sister supplied me with a 2x4" piece of wood and a hammer. With the help of some of my family, I figured out how to use the eyelet tool/smasher. I found it to be reasonably easy once I knew what I was doing.

Tired of all the explanation of the process? I am, so let’s jump to the actual pages.

Cover

To create the covers, we drew on the felt with fabric markers. My awesome husband did most of the drawing on both covers. The sewn border is there because we needed a pocket for the...

Mr. Potato Head Page

I had a lot of fun with this page. I first saw the idea on Life With My Littles, which led me to The Quiet Book Blog's template. However, my quiet book research also led me to Oopsey Daisy's simpler template (I was all about simple with this project).

I did modify the pieces some to suit my tastes and colored on the center of the eyes rather than sewing them on. 

Positioning where to sew on the Mr. Potato Head body was tricky since it had to conceal a pocket on the backside for the...

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Page

I loved reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom as a child, so when I saw the idea on Life With My Littles, I knew I had to do this page. I created the page for both books since it was more complex than Alice wanted to tackle, and I really wanted both nephews to have this page. I downloaded the template from Oopsey Daisy. I didn't like the leaves from the template, so I drew my own, and I think they turned out okay. 

Life With My Littles used the letters from her son's name. I decided to use my nephews' last names so the book can be passed down to younger siblings (if desired), plus it was less letters this way. We used fabric markers to write "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" on the page. Despite the sewing problem mentioned above, I am very happy with how these pages turned out.

At this point, the books Alice and I made took divergent paths. I will alternate between our two books as we go forward.

Wanna Build a Snowman Page

This page caught my fancy from the moment I saw it on Pinterest. I got the template from Imagine Our Life, though I simplified and modified things a little.

My husband and I loved Frozen when it came out, so we bought the CD. We listened to it repeatedly as we drove in our car until we were sick of it. When I made this page, my husband suggested the very appropriate quote from Frozen for the title of this page.

Numbers and Shapes Pages

Alice's next two pages are simple, educational matching games. We got the idea for the matching numbers from Life With My Littles and the idea for the shapes from The Quiet Book Blog.

Alice made her own template for these pieces. She traced the shape patterns onto the background with a fabric marker. If you want patterns for these pages, you can find the numbers pattern on How to Make a Quiet Book and the shapes pattern on Powerful Mothering.

Popcorn Popping Page

I found this idea on Life With My Littles, which led me to the template from Little Miss Stitcher. This page got instantly added to my "must do" list.

In my church, there is a children's song called "Popcorn Popping." It is a song beloved by many children, but it has an extra special place in my heart. As a child I looked out the window at my grandparent's home and realized that the blossoms on their apricot tree did indeed look a little like popcorn.

I liked the idea of having the "popcorn" attach to buttons on the page but found the idea too ambitious for my time frame and sewing skills. My husband suggested I make the pocket look like a flower, which I think adds an extra fun touch to the page.

Ice Cream Page

The idea for Alice's next page came from a pattern from Oopsey Daisy. She chose to keep the page simple, only three flavors to choose from: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. I really liked this page, but it didn't quite make the cut when it came to the point where we needed to reduce the scope of this project. Hopefully I can make this page in the future. 

Music Notes Page

I found this idea on Pinterest and immediately loved it. My husband is a musician (and he helped with this page), and I've always loved music. The blog this idea is on is in another language (my first guess was eastern European, and looking further it appears she is from Poland), but a picture is worth a thousand words. Ours did not turn out as awesome as hers (I believe this is what one would call a Pinterest fail), but it is the same basic idea. It works, and I do like it. But maybe with more practice we can perfect it. 

Gumball Machine Page

The last page Alice did was a gumball machine. We got the template from Oopsey Daisy, but Alice chose to just cut out the main shape in white felt and use fabric markers to color it in rather than sewing various pieces of felt together. I think it looks quite nice. 

Fly Me to the Moon Page

This is the page I am most proud of. I found the idea on Life With My Littles, which lead me to a template from Homemade by Jill. I wanted to add the embellishments to the sky (probably just some stars) but chose not to due to time constraints. However, I couldn't resist the idea to create pocket for the spaceship that looked like earth. Sewing through three layers of felt was a bit difficult (in order to sew the pocket on the page), but it worked out.

And there you have it, the quiet books Alice and I made. My first quiet book, and undoubtedly not my last. I had fun doing it, was grateful for my family's help, and look forward to doing it again someday.