Ramya's No-Sew Quiet Book

Making a quiet book can be intimidating for a lot of people; if you haven't sewed anything before or if you think all the supplies will cost too much, it can be hard to get started. Ramya of the blog Ramya DIY, shows that this needn't be the case though. She created this quiet book with no sewing at all and all the supplies costing her only $7! How she did it was with a hot glue gun, felt, and foam sheets. She has so many cute pages that a child would love to play with. Enjoy!

Interview

What's your name? Describe yourself in one sentence. 
My name is Ramya, I am a stay-at-home-mom.

Who did you make this quiet book for? How old are they? 
I made this book for my one year old son.

What's your level of sewing experience? 
Zero.

How long did it take you? 
It took me about 20 hours.

Did you use any templates? Where can they be found? 
No, I have used my own basic drawing skills.

How did you bind your quiet book? 
I used a mini hot glue gun and stuck al the page to the spine of the book cover.

What material are the pages made out of? 
They are made of felt.

What other materials did you use? 
I also used foam sheets alternatively with felt for the design on each page.

How much did all the supplies cost book? 
Including the mini hot glue gun it cost me just around $7.

What's your favorite page? Why? 
I love the outer space pages because I think I got all the elements and color co-ordination correct.

To see Ramya's quiet book on her own blog with more description, click here: Easy No-Sew Felt Quiet Book.

Ramya, thank you so much for sharing your creative 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!

Mandrina's Quiet Book

Today's adorable quiet book comes to us from Mandrina, a Canadian living in England. She made this book for her daughter, a toddler, and it is awesome. It is absolutely jam-packed full of fun activities.

She starts out with a Matryoshka doll page (Russian stacking dolls). They're something that I've never seen in a quiet book before and it is a really cute way to teach kids about big, bigger, and biggest. Mandrina then has a flower page and a forest page (with little animals hidden that can play peekaboo).

 Next there's a really cute counting page spread with leaves on one side covered in certain numbers of bugs. The leaves velcro off to show the number written underneath, and then the child can put the leaves in a vinyl jar on the opposite page. It's followed by another number page where you can lift the flap with a number on it to count the number of buttons beneath, and then an awesome page with two people one it, where you can flip the tops and bottoms to create new combinations of people. (It's really cool, and hard to explain. You'll just have to look for yourself.)

 

Next Mandrina has two space pages: one of the solar system with all the planets, and one with an astronaut, rocket, and alien. She made her daughter the astronaut. :) These pages are followed by a build-a-robot spread, and two snow pages where you can decorate a snowman. 

Following the snowman there's a laundry page, complete with washing machine and socks that you can match up on the page. The clothing theme continues into the next spread, which is a girl's bedroom with a wardrobe full of clothes. On the opposite page there's a doll that you can dress up with all the clothes from the wardrobe.

The next pages take us outside to a farm, where a barn is filled with adorable finger puppets (and I love the fabric used for the background!) and a tractor goes up the hill where you can pick carrots and radishes.

We then go underwater to one of the cleverest shape pages I've ever seen. All of the ocean animals are particular shapes, so you can practice with your toddler by asking them where the triangle-shaped fish is, the rectangle fish, and so on. The next page is an alphabet page with the ABCs sewed on to the page and also stored in little pockets, followed by a quilt page, and then the cover, which is made of cute fabric and has handles for easy carrying.

 

Interview

What's your name? Describe yourself in one sentence.

My name is Mandrina and I'm a mom. If my former self were to meet me now she would probably lol.

Who did you make this quiet book for? How old are they?
I made this book for my daughter who's 20 months old.

What's your level of sewing experience?
I've been sewing off and on (mostly off) since I was a kid. Becoming a mom has re sparked my interest in sewing and I've becoming a bit of a Pinterest junky. I still feel like a beginner. My work isn't perfect but I'm happy with the finished project.

How long did it take you?
I worked on it over three weeks for a few hours a day while my daughter was napping. I've fallen behind on a lot of other things.

Did you use any templates? Where can they be found?
I spent hours on Pinterest looking for inspiration for the pages and used templates from imagineourlife.com for the solar system, astronaut, socks and robot pages. Her designs are adorable and she has a great Montessori inspired blog. On the snowman page, I directly copied the skiing snowman from betzwhite.com.

How did you bind your quiet book?
I bound it with 3.5" rings pulled through button holes on each page and made a canvas cover with handles.

What material are the pages made out of?
I've been collecting loads of different fabric remnants, fat quarters and scraps. I used felt and various cotton bits.

What other materials did you use?
I used sequins, buttons, snaps, velcro, beads, clear vinyl sheets and ribbon as well.

How much did all the supplies cost you?
I think it all probably cost about £40 once I finished.

What's your favorite page? Why?
My favourite page is the forest page with my daughter's hand as the tree branches and the hiding animals because it's one that I designed on my own. I think it's also the one that took the least amount of time to put together.

Mandrina, thank you so much for sharing your fantastic 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!

Winnie's Quiet Book

Today's adorable quiet book comes to us from Winnie of the blog Be A Creative Mom. She hand-sewed the entire thing in just about a week, which is seriously impressive! I love the look that hand-sewing gives quiet books, and I especially love the embroidery that Winnie added to the front and back covers.

In addition to the awesome embroidered covers, Winnie's quiet book has a safari animals page (the animals are hanging on buttons, and can be removed and played with), a purse page (with toys to find inside), a shapes page, a numbers page (which flaps that lift up with objects underneath for children to count), a telephone page (with velcro numbers), a bee and flowers string page, a ribbon page, and an octopus page (with beads on his tentacles to count).

Interview

What's your name? Describe yourself in one sentence. 
My name is Winnie; I am a mom of 2 living in Singapore.

Who did you make this quiet book for? How old are they? 

I made this book for my one-year-old daughter.

What's your level of sewing experience? How long did it take you?
I consider myself a intermediate sewer, as I hand sew lots of stuff. My speed is actually decent. The book took me about one week to finish while sewing 2 hours a day. So roughly 14-15 hours.

Did you use any templates? Where can they be found? 

I used some from online. I don't remember all of the resources so just listed what I can find as below. Just want to say thank you to all the fantastic moms who posted their templates.
The purse page is from Apron Girls: Quiet Book.
Ribbon page is from And Next Comes L: Ribbon Pulling Quiet Book Page.

Forgot where the octopus and bee is from... But they are super famous quiet book pages!

How did you bind your quiet book? 

Just by sewing.

What material are the pages made out of? 

Felt.

What other materials did you use? 

Beads, ribbons, yarn, velcro, a key, a card,etc.
 

How much did all the supplies cost you? 

About $15-20.

What's your favorite page? Why?  

I simply love them all... I worked quite a bit to design and find pages suit my 1 yr old girl. My girl loves the octopus beads page the most.

To see Winnie's quiet book on her own blog, click here: Be A Creative Mom - Quiet Book. Winnie, thank you so much for sharing your quiet book!

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

Caroline's Quiet Book

Today's quiet book is so cute and I'm so excited to share it with you! It was made by Caroline from the blog To the Piechecker! for her son Luke, and it is just adorable. All the way from the front page with her son's name sewn on it, to the awesome garden page, to the build-your-own sandwich page, to the cute fabric (bugs in jars) she chose for the quiet book cover, this book is full of cute details and fun activities that any kid would love.

 Shapes page with snap-off shapes and shapes sewn in matching colors on the page:

 An abacus/counting page:

I like that the circles are made of all felt - I've wanted to make a counting page like this before, but they're usually made with beads and I don't have any beads lying around my house. Felt circles are a great idea!

A space page (love the Tardis): 

Adorable garden page:

 I really like how Caroline added the tomato plant growing up from the hill; it's so cute and such a great use of space!

A bees and flowers threading page where you string the bee through the loops on the flowers, all the way to the beehive:

A dinosaur page:

A fish page with tails you can switch around:

A rainbow page with matching color names that can snap on the rainbow:

A "collect the fireflies" page with an awesome vinyl jar:

 (I absolutely love this lightning bug page - I've never seen a quiet book page like it before!)

And to top it all off, a build-your-own sandwich page (with "ingredients" for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a meat and veggies sandwich):

Interview

What's your name? Describe yourself in one sentence.

My name is Caroline, I'm an art school grad and currently a stay at home mother.

Who did you make this quiet book for? How old are they?
I made this book for my son Luke, he is two years old.

What's your level of sewing experience?

I would say I have a novice level of sewing experience, I am much better at sewing by hand than on a machine.

How long did it take you?

I worked on this book for about 3 months, a few hours here and there after my son went to bed. It was impossible to work on with him running around, he kept stealing all the felt!

Did you use any templates? Where can they be found?

I looked at a lot of other quiet books for inspiration. Many of my pages were inspired by the Imagine Our Life blog. I also traced objects like shapes from my sons shape sorter, and letters.

How did you bind your quiet book?

I put grommets in all my pages and used binder rings to bind the book. I also sewed a cover that snaps closed.

What material are the pages made out of?

The cover is flannel and cotton, the pages are almost exclusively felt, except for a small amount of clear vinyl.

What other materials did you use?

I also used snaps, thread, ribbon, and d-rings.

How much did all the supplies cost you?

I probably spent over $50 for this project. It's hard to tell because I bought a bunch of felt by the yard, and only used a small amount of each color. 

What's your favorite page? Why?

I think my favorite page is the gardening one. It came out exactly as I imagined it and I love all the details. Plus we love gardening!

To see Caroline's quiet book on her own blog, with more details about each page, click here: To the Piechecker!

Caroline, thank you so much for sharing your 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!