Quiet Book - Page 5: Basic Shapes

One of the basics that we start teaching our kiddos from pretty early on is their shapes.  And there are a lot of different shapes out there.  A friend has a shape toy for her son that has to have at lest two dozen different shapes on it - some that I didn't even know the proper name of.  Well, I didn't want to get that complex for my shapes page.  Four shapes seemed like a nice place to start - square, triangle, circle, heart and/or pentagon. 

Not only does this page help to teach a handful of basic shapes, but it has a fun little matching game on it where the shapes have to be matched together.  Although because I attached all of the shapes using ribbon to the page so there wouldn't be any lost shapes for this page, the matching game is a pretty easy one.

Quiet Book - Page 4: Colors of the Rainbow

ROY G BV - yup, those initials are how I learned the order of the colors of the rainbow.  But I figured that putting those initials on a page wouldn't be a very fun way for a little one to begin learning colors.  I wanted a page that showed all the colors of the rainbow without it being boring, and a quiet book page posted by Amber Mea at Amber May Be was my inspiration for the page I created.  

Using some imagination, I came up with different little characters or symbols to sew under each flap that are easily associated with each color. For red - of coarse it had to be an apple.  For orange, I made a little goldfish because honestly what toddler hasn't had a goldfish cracker?

For yellow, I made a sun.  It turned out a bit wonky, but I guess that's what happens when I try to just wing it while I'm cutting a shape out.  For green, it was a nice simple green leaf. 

For blue, I made a little blue bird (although it looks a little like an Easter Peep or that could just be the pregnancy hormones/cravings talking.....).  And for purple, not wanting to go with a bunch of grapes as I wasn't sure how to make that, I went with a simple flower.

Of coarse to ensure that all shapes, characters, and symbols that I used are recognizable by most toddlers, I tested the page out on my son and without too much prompting, he figured out what everything was.  Gotta love having a test subject from my target audience living right under my own roof! ;)

Quiet Book - Page 3: Animals Hiding in Grass

Page 3 of the quiet books is a page that I have made before for my son's quiet book.  I changed it up slightly this time around using three different shades of green felt for the grass and I used my pinking shears to cut the grass which gives it a cool grass-like texture. 

There are so many great things about this page which is why when I was coming up with page ideas, this page made the list yet again of pages that I liked and wanted to do for both books.  This page is a great sensory page for little ones as they search for animals hiding in the "grass".  And for older kids, it's fun to try to find all of the matches for the animals along the top of the page. 

I love making this page because the resulting page is so fun and it is one of the easier pages to put together. 

Quiet Book - Page 2: Ribbon Sensory Animals

And now onto page 2! 
For the second page of the quiet books, I ended up making two different versions of the same idea - an animal with ribbons as a large sensory feature for the page. 
For the "Girly" version, my inspiration was a jellyfish applique that I had seen that was so cute.  I figured out how to adapt the idea and use ribbons as the jellyfish's tentacles. 

I hand embroidered on the jellyfish's mouth and eyebrows/eyelashes and the googly eyes are the sew-in kind.  I love how cute and playful the face for the jellyfish turned out! 

I also had to add in some seaweed to the background of this page.  After all, jellyfish do live in the ocean!

For the "Boy" version of this page, I went with a dinosaur!  I'm quite impressed at how well the shape of this guy turned out considering I free-hand sketched him out.  I used lots of different ribbons for the dino's spines along his back.  I'm hoping the little boy who gets the book with this page in it loves it as much as my Little Bear loved it.  Needless to say, I wasn't able to do much work on this page while Little Bear was awake.  

For a little extra 3D feature to this page, I figure out how to sew the tale so that it was free the swing about. 

And for extra details, I sewed a bunch of orange spots onto the dinosaur.  I'm pretty sure this dinosaur doesn't fit the profile of any dinosaur known to man, but I still think he is pretty cute!  I also had some fun with the sun in the corner of the page by adding in some stitch lines. 

Both of these pages were so much fun to put together.  This was a page where I had so many different ideas of what I could do that it took a while to narrow down which animals to actually do.  But, I am really happy that the jellyfish and the dinosaur were the two that I ended up going with. :)

Quite Books - Page 1: Ribbon Pulling

I declare the next few days to be all about quiet books here on my blog.  Never fear though, I do have other projects in the works and will be posting things other than quiet books in the near future.  But for now, I'm going to jump right in and do a little show and tell of each of the 10 different pages I made for the two quiet books I just recently finished up. 
For the first page, I was inspired by a pin I stumbled across on Pinterest of this page by And Next Comes L. 

I love that this page is a really simple page to make and yet still provides for tons of sensory fun for a little one.  Below you can see the two different versions of this page that I made.  I did discover that next time I make this page, I definitely want to go with the darker colored felt so the ribbons can't be seen through the page. 

And that's a wrap for page 1.  Only nine more to go! ;)

A Quiet Book Finish - The Book Covers

Around Christmas of 2012, I made three quiet books for my son and my oldest two nephews.  Although they were a lot of fun to make, they were also very time consuming.  As much as I wanted to make more of these, I just didn't have the time to devote to making more.  I had also promised my husband that I wouldn't make more until I did have the time to make them without taking time away from him and Little Bear.  Fast forward to January of 2014 and now I finally have the time to make more quiet books.  I just needed someone to make a quiet book for.  It just so happened that two different people close to me both requested that I put together quiet books for their littles.  Hurray!!
I still loved many of the page layouts from the original three quiet books I made, but I wanted to add in / switch out a few page layouts for some fun pages I had come across on Pinterest.  After much deliberation, I finally narrowed the page layouts down to 10 pages plus the covers for each book.  The two books also have a few pages that are different from the other book because I wanted each book to be personal to the little receiving the book.
It took a while to get them all put together because I would work on them a little at a time in between my other projects so they wouldn't get overwhelming.  Finally, last week I finished these beauties up!  Hurray!  I decided that instead of overwhelming you with a huge post about the quiet books, I'd break it down for you.  So for today, I'm going to be showing off the covers that I made for each quiet book.
First up is the quiet book I made for a little boy:

This little guy's nursery had been done in a woodland animals type theme, so this cover seemed perfectly fitting. 

I added a buckle clip to the cover which will make it great for keeping the book all together.

I love how the tree on the front cover turned out.  I had seen a few different people make tree layouts for their quiet books and I really liked this technique of adding texture to the tree trunk and branches.

And how cute is this little hedgehog down in the corner of the front page?  I really love that the googly eye is a sew in googly eye (which by the way are surprisingly hard to find!). 

Up next is the quiet book that I made for a little girl.  Doesn't the front cover just scream girly?  I love that because I don't usually get a chance to make gifts for little girls, so putting this together was a lot of fun. 

I left the outside edge of the wings on the butterflies detached so that there is a lovely 3-D aspect to this front cover. 

For the two felt flowers, I kept them pretty simple compared to the really complex felt flowers out there that you can make.  But I like them and they still add a nice texture and pop of fun to the front cover. 

Well, that wraps up the front covers.  Stayed tuned as I'll be posting more about the rest of the pages I made for these two quiet books over the coming weeks.  

Hooded Baby Towels for Little One

Can you believe it?  I've been making so many projects lately (I'm blaming crazy pregnancy hormones and I think sewing a billion things is my crazy form of nesting), but anyways, I almost forgot to post this cute set of four towels that I made for our little one when he arrives.  My sister-in-law (who is due a couple weeks before me) had requested some baby towels be made for their little one.  Well, after some searching, I came upon this tutorial over on Just Another Day in Paradise and I knew it was exactly what I was looking for.  I ended up making two towels for my sister-in-law (which you can see here).  After making those two towels, I knew I had to make some for our own little one.

I ended up make four towels - two yellow and two blue towels.  And using the left over towel scraps, I also made 10 matching wash clothes for the little guy.  The bias tape I made for these towels ended up being really easy to make after I found this great tutorial to follow.  I literally made yards and yards of bias tape from just 1 yard of material.  I love the look of home made bias tape so much better than the stuff you get in the store. 

Husband Dear helped to pick out the animals I used to make the appliques on the hoods.  I love how cute they make the towels!  They just shout bath time fun!
Overall, I was thrilled with how easy these towels were to make and just how cute they turned out.  And a huge bonus for me, is that these towels are made from regular bath towels (which you can get for cheep at Target on sale!) which are super soft and fluffy - so much more soft and fluffy than most baby towels you buy in the store!  I can't wait now for little guy to arrive so we can enjoy bath time with these great new towels!