Amber's Quiet Book

You guys. I love today's quiet book. It is so well made. Each page just shines with quality. I love all the details - the stitching around each page and each figure. It was made by Amber of By Amber's Hands, who clearly has a lot of talent. Check it out!

Interview

What's your name? Describe yourself in one sentence. 
My name is Amber. I'm a strange mix of extrovert and homebody, I love to create things and I always have more ideas than I have time to actually do.

Who did you make this quiet book for? How old are they?
I made this for my son and gave it to him on his 2nd birthday.

What's your level of sewing experience?
I'm definitely a beginner. I actually thought I hated sewing for a long time. Then I got into hand-sewing and got comfortable with that pretty quickly. I was still terrified of sewing machines until I finally got one that was really user-friendly. Now I can't believe I haven't done more with it!

How long did it take you?
Umm... This is kind of a hard question to answer. I started planning it way before I actually worked on it. I had intended to make it much earlier than I did (by about 6 months, I think) but we had some unexpected things happen in my family, so I didn't start on it at all until about May. I didn't finish until September, but that's because I didn't have a ton of time to work on it all at once. I think each page probably only took me an hour or two from start to finish, but when you have a toddler you have to steal little bits of time here and there.

Did you use any templates? Where can they be found?
I didn't use any templates. I sketched out each page and made stencils out of heavy vellum, then traced it onto the fabric.

How did you bind your quiet book?
Well, I made one piece of fabric that was big enough to use as the front and back, with some room to bind. I had machine-sewed smaller groups of pages together, then when I bound it, I hand-sewed large stitches through the cover & all the pages. It worked ok, but was hard to keep everything together as I was stiching and to stitch straight!

What material are the pages made out of?
Felt.

What other materials did you use?
Cotton patterned fabrics for some things, canvas for the shoe, a zipper, velcro, snaps, Heatn' Bond, shoelace, buckle, bells, buttons...

How much did all the supplies cost you?
I honestly don't know... I bought the supplies a few months before I even started working on it, then it took me a few months to make it, then a few more months to blog about it... so it's been nearly a year since I bought most of the supplies!

What's your favorite page? Why?
I think my favorite is the first page, the one with the window & the cat. It was actually the last one I came up with, and I was kind of stuck. I had 9 pages that I had no trouble coming up with ideas for, but I needed one more. I actually didn't get the idea until I was at the fabric store, looking at different materials. I think the cat ended up cute, and the window was something I hadn't seen in other quiet books. I ended up having to make a change to it later, because my original materials didn't hold up. But it was a simple fix (I don't know why I didn't think to do it that way in the first place!) and I think it should last for a long time.


You should definitely check out Amber's quiet book on her own blog, where she has several more pictures and a lot more instructions and details about every page. Here are the links for the different pages:

Busy Book Pages 1 & 2 (The Cat in the Window and the Squirrel)
Busy Book Pages 3 & 4 (The Bird on the Nest and the Bear in the Tree)
Busy Book Pages 5 & 6 (The Dog and the Shoe)
Busy Book Pages 7, 8, 9, & 10 (The Pocket, Overalls, Numbers, and Colorful Shapes)

Thank you so much, Amber, for sharing your amazing quiet book with us! :)

Have you made a quiet book that you'd like to share? Click here for instructions on how to submit your own quiet book!