The Quiet Book

I never thought I would make a quiet book.

And actually, I didn't make one.

I was the coach.

My 10 year old daughter rocked this project.

It was my suggestion. (rolling my eyes at myself....WHY do I always come up with complicated ideas!!!??)

Of course, Angeline jumped right on this idea and the rest is basically history.

We brainstormed together, and with the help of pinterest, came up with a multitude of ideas.

I drove her to Joann Fabrics and helped her make some decisions.

 And so the quiet book project commenced armed with :

-felt

-scissors

-heat and bond

-iron

-sewing machine

-hot glue (yes, when all else fails-use hot glue!!)

-eyelet kit

-hammer

-9 lives


Angeline did all the cutting. This was no small job. We learned this trick for cutting felt {almost} perfectly. 

Some of the patterns were printed from online resources. Some were created on our own.  We had to downsize most of the patterns that we found online because the book we created is smaller in size than most traditional quiet books.

We made it smaller for two reasons

1. It didn't feel so overwhelming
2. I wanted it to fit in my church bag.


We kept our designs very simple and avoided using the sewing machine as much as possible.

We also tried to keep the page activities simple enough for a young toddler.

front cover

This was by far Angeline's favorite page to design and it is also Cassie's favorite page to play with. I love it too.  It's basically a felt paper doll with lots of trendy outfits.

This is a birthday cake page. The candles, pink icing and confetti are all removable and are stored in the little pocket oppose the cake. Cassie loves to put the candles on the cake and then try to blow them out.

Here we have flowers and apples to pick. The apples can be stored in the brown basket by the tree.  The flowers are attached to the page by buttons and the apples by snaps. (it is important to double any pieces for durability that will be handled/pulled/prodded. We cut double the flowers and apples and ironed them together with heat and bond)

Balloons are attached to by Velcro. The pocket opposite is simply a storage pocket. (extra clothes that do not fit on the clothes line get stored in here)

                                  Mailbox with personal letters for Cassie.

We stuffed the mailbox with pictures of family and stickers in addition to the letters.

 

  The scoops of ice cream can be removed and rearranged. They are attached by Velcro. Opposite is a page with elastic strings of beads. Cassie slides the beads and pulls on them. I think using the elastic string was a brilliant idea.

 

 This picture is primarily to show how I zig-zagged the pages together and also to show the eyelets and rings that we used to put the book together.  Angeline and I liked the idea of using the eyelets and rings so that additional pages can be added to the book in the future.

We even got Amos involved with inserting the eyelets. I am quite certain that I could have done this job myself, but the strength of his fingers and his skill with a hammer proved to be of great value.

Although my daughter did a lot of the work on this book - I want to be clear- if you decide to enable your daughter to create something like this- it will require a  lot of careful coaching and time. I didn't actually calculate how much time was invested in this project however, I know that between the two of us we nearly exhausted 9 lives.

It was rewarding to see Angeline work hard on this book-utilizing all her creative powers and learning new skills.

It has been equally rewarding to watch Cassie enjoy the labor of her sister's love. 

And I can't say how much I love this kind of gift over a plastic toy from the Dollar Store.