Stephanie's Quiet Book

Hi everyone! I'm back from my summer/fall blog break. During the time I was gone lots of people submitted their awesome quiet books, and I'm excited to share them all with you!

Today's quiet book was made by Stephanie for her granddaughter Ellie. It is so cute and features lots of dolls and embroidery. Enjoy!

Interview

What's your name? Describe yourself in one sentence. 
My name is Stephanie. I am 48 and live in Louisiana.

Who did you make this quiet book for? How old are they?
I am a first time Nana, with my granddaughter being a very BUSY and inquisitive 16 months. She needed something to occupy her attention during church, thus the Quiet Book. I began scanning Pinterest for ideas and discovered a COMMUNITY of fellow Quiet Book makers, which ultimately led me to your blog, which helped me tremendously with ideas.  
 
Did you use any templates? Where can they be found?
I am a teacher so I attacked this during the summer while I was off. I used my home monogramming machine, the Janome 350 Memory Craft, to help with the embroidered page designs, which I bought from Etsy.

How long did it take you?
I probably spent about 2 hours on each page.  

What material are the pages made out of?
I used soft flannel for the pages and a very stiff "something" that I bought from Walmart in the interfacing section. The very stiff "something" was inserted to each page to make the book sturdy!

How much did all the supplies cost you?
The total materials cost was about $50 but I have enough fabric to make another one.

What's your favorite page? Why? 

My favorite pages are the Raggedy Ann and the Candy Ann Paper Doll. However, my granddaughter's favorite page is the bead page. She loves sliding them back and forth.

I will soon begin her winter holiday quiet book. I have been asked to make these to sell, but some things are simply labors of love...you can't put a price on a Quiet Book!


Thank you so much for submitting your adorable quiet book, Stephanie!

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!

Arahia's Quiet Book

Happy Monday, everybody! Happy Independence Day to all the Americans out there; I hope you had a good holiday weekend.

Today's quiet book comes to us from Michelle of the blog Sew Little Time. It is absolutely adorable and has so many cute pages. She made it for her daughter Arahia, and the cover has her name spelled out in letters that she can velcro on and off. It also has a little felt doll of Arahia, which is just as cute as can be.

The pages inside the book include a Disney princess dress up page, with outfits for Belle, Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, and the wardrobe from Beauty and the Beast. Another page has an adorable toadstool (mushroom) house that zippers open to reveal three fairy finger puppets, and a door that opens to show a little gnome. The next page has a flower whose petals have numbers on them, and ladybugs on ribbons with numbers of dots on their backs that correspond to the petals. There's also an awesome cupcake decorating page, clown stacking rings page, owl puzzle page, ballerina shoe lace-up page, Rapunzel hair-braiding page, and a dog page with a collar that buckles. Enjoy!

Interview

What's your name? Describe yourself in one sentence. 
My name is Michelle, I have two beautiful children and I love to craft in my spare time.

Who did you make this quiet book for? How old are they? 
This book was made for my daughter, Arahia. She is only 8 months old but my four year old son is currently enjoying it. Although, he does tell me it’s a bit too girly for him.

What's your level of sewing experience? 
I am probably an advanced beginner.

How long did it take you?
This took me a couple of months of mainly sewing during nap times.

Did you use any templates? Where can they be found? 
I copied, adapted and stole most of my ideas of Pinterest. I have tried to list all of these over on my blog: http://craftyexpatmamanz.blogspot.co.nz/

How did you bind your quiet book? 
I bound this book together using eyelets and binder rings.

What material are the pages made out of?
Mainly fabric and felt.

What other materials did you use? 
Lots of bits and pieces from my stash.

How much did all the supplies cost you? 
Probably around $25.

What's your favorite page? Why? 
I love the dress up doll page. I loved all the Disney movies as a child.

To see more pictures of Michelle's quiet book, check it out on her blog: Sew Little Time - Quiet Book Page 1.

Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your super adorable 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!