Quiet Book Page: Ruffly Lion

Good day!

Let's continue with the ruffly lion page for the "At the Zoo" quiet book.

Materials & Tools:

Felt - light brown, pale yellow, black, white, purple
Thread - light brown, black

Rig rags - yellow, orange

Ribbons - dark brown, light brown, orange polka dots, light brown polka dots

Needle
Hot glue gun
Fire lighter

Steps:

1. Cut felt pieces based on the template. 

2. Attach ears, eyes, nose and mouth to the lion face using hot glue.

3. Cut ribbons and rig-rags as the lion's mane. I cut brown ribbons into longer lengths to create loops while the rest of the ribbons and rig-rags are cut into lengths half the size of the brown ribbons. Carefully burn the ends using a fire lighter to prevent fraying.

4. Time to attach the hairs to the head! Using hot glue, carefully attach ribbons and rig-rags to the back of the head, with the ends of the ribbon measuring about an inch from the edge of the head. Now, glue the lion head onto the page.

5. Make simple straight line stitches along the edge of the head to secure the head and mane to the page. Lastly, stitch the eyebrows and whiskers using the back-stitching method. Yep, the ruffly lion page is now all done!

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Quiet Book Page: Peek-a-Boo Panda

Now that Baby V's "At the Zoo" quiet book is complete, I'll be spending time on the steps for you to make your own. This time around I don't have photos for every single step of the page making but I can assure you that everything you need to know about the process will be explained in detail. And of course, free printable templates will be available for download soon. So here goes, let's start with the peek-a-boo panda page!

Materials & Tools:

Felt - Black, white, pink, lime green
Thread - Black

Needle

A pair of googly eyes

A pair of snap fasteners
Hot glue gun

Method:

1. Cut felt pieces based on the template.

2. Arrange all parts accordingly as in where you want the ears, eyes, nose, and blush to be before you start glueing it permanently with hot glue. This step is important because you'll get all sorts different panda faces with different arrangements. Haha. You also want to ensure that the eyes are in the right place so that the arms are long enough to reach and cover them.

3. Glue all parts excluding the arm. Thread a needle and tie several knots at the end. Use two strands of threads instead of a single strand so that the outline of the mouth is more prominent. Sew the mouth (i.e. something shaped like the letter "w") below the nose using the back-stitching method. Sew one side of the snap fastener on the panda body.

4. Sew another side of the snap fastener on the arm of the panda. Repeat for two arms. You'll end up with arms that exposes messy stitches from sewing the snap fasteners. Layer another arm cut-out on top so that the stitches are hidden. You can either glue the pieces together or blanket stitch around the pieces. I prefer the later because it gives more durability, especially with destructive tiny humans. :P

5. Fasten the arm to the body and there you go, a shy panda with movable arms! 

"At the Zoo" Quiet Book: Video

Ta-daah! My "At the Zoo" quiet book for my tiny human! Stay tuned for the upcoming tutorials and printable templates! Enjoy!

"Under the Sea" Quiet Book: Video + Template

Hello again! As promised, this is the video for the completed "Under the Sea" book. Click here for the printable template.

Here are all the related links for the step-by-step guide:

1. What's a Quiet Book: Materials & Tools
2. Surfacing Whale
3. Sliding fish and Lift-the-Flap Oyster
4. Sensory Jellyfish 
5. Peek-a-Boo Crab
6. Tic-Tac-Toe
7. Clown Fish among Seaweeds
8. Fish Puzzle
9. Cover of the "Under the Sea" Quiet Book
10. Page Finishing and Book Compilation

Last but not least, please do tag me on Facebook if you happen to make any quiet book pages of your own. I would really love to see how yours turn out. Hehe.

Thanks for reading and happy crafting! :D

Quiet Book: Page Finishing and Book Compilation

There are plenty of ways to finish off the pages: (1) attach bias tape, (2) use a serger or a zig zag stitch, if your sewing machine allows, or, (3) hand sew it with blanket stitch. I use the third method after a not so pleasant experience of trying to attach bias tape on the edges of thick pages using my not so heavy-duty sewing machine some time ago. The stitches would sometimes come out uneven or threads would clump together in a mess. Worst still, I need plenty of time and patience to remove the stitches, and sew it again all over. >.<

And of course, I don't have a serger nor a machine that allows me to do a zig-zag stitch. So until I get a proper machine, I'd rather stick to the good ol' method of hand sewing with a blanket stitch. The bright side of this method? It gives a nice "hand-made" look to the final book! :P

So here's what you do when all the book pages and book cover are ready:

1. Arrange pages to your preference. Blanket stitch pages back-to-back, i.e. sew page page 2 on the back of page 1, page 4 on the back of page 3, and so on.

2. I use a 2-in-1 eyelet plier like this to punch holes on all of the pages and attach eyelets. Here's what to do: punch holes, trim around the holes if necessary (the edges of the cut does not always come out clean due to the thickness of the page), push eyelet through the hole on the right side (i.e. the front of the page), align the plier and place washer on the wrong side (i.e. the back of the page), and lastly, squeeze the pliers together. The size of my quiet book is 25cm x 25cm so I punched 3 holes on each page to hold the book together better. The distance between holes is personal preference but mine is as shown in the picture below.

3. Last but not least, join all pages together with clip rings. Ta-daah! The book is now all done! :D

If you still can't get the hold of applying eyelets, fret not, I have a video coming up on how to apply it! Trust me, it's a nice tool to use for almost any craft and sewing project! Do stay tuned for a video of my completed book too! :D

Quiet Book: Cover of the "Under the Sea" Book

I'm finally back with my "Under the Sea" quiet book again after more than a month now! >.< If you have been reading my previous posts, you'll notice that I've been busy posting recipes, travelling Japan, and organising my tiny human's first birthday photoshoot. Haha.

Now that all eight pages of the book are ready, it's time to finally make the book cover! The steps are pretty straightforward this time, so here goes!

1. Use a piece of white colour felt as the base of the cover. Cut a wavy piece of blue colour felt as the sea. Cut some sea grass out of a green colour felt.

2. Print the book title in your preferred font. Cut the template, lightly trace the outline of inverse of the alphabets onto a piece of felt, and start cutting out the alphabets. Why the inverse? So that there are no traces of ball pen lines on the right side of the alphabets. :D Some pretty useful tips about alphabet cutting here: thicker fonts are easier to work with and the easiest way of cutting holes for letters like "a", "b", "e" and so on, is to use a hole punch.

3. Draw and cut template for the seahorse. Stick two pieces together using a glue gun. Sew decorative lines on the tummy of the seahorse using back-stitching. Add googly eyes to the seahorse.

4. Glue the blue wavy felt onto the white felt and start assembling the cover. Arrange all items according to your liking and make necessary adjustments before you start glueing everything permanently.

5. Get another piece of felt to act as the inside of the cover. Using blanket stitch, attach both the outside and the inside of the cover together. Ta-daah, it's now all done!

6. Similarly, sew two piece of felt together using blanket stitch as the back of the book cover.

The quiet book is almost complete now! Do look out for my next post on page finishing and book compilation. :D

Quite Book Page: Peek-A-Boo Crab

This is a cute peek-a-boo page that sure delights tiny humans. Let's get started!

1. Draw and cut template. Cut all the parts of the crab. Four pieces of arms are needed because I made each crab arms in two layers of felt.

2. Sew one side of the a snap fastener onto a piece of arm cut out. Cover the stitches by sticking another piece of arm onto that arm. Next, blanket stitch around the arm. Repeat the steps to create another arm and this is what you'll get.

3. Using a glue gun, stick a piece of beige cut-out to the page so that it resembles the seabed. Glue the crab body and eyes to the quiet book page.

4. Sew the other side of the snap fastener onto the crab body. Stitch the smile of the crab using white embroidery threads. I used back-stitch for the smile.

5. Now that the crab body is ready, attach the arms and start playing peek-a-boo! :D

Quiet Book Page: Sliding Fish & Lift-the-Flap Oyster Pages

I'm finally back with more updates on my "Under the Sea" quiet book pages! Since this two pages are continuous, I am going to do the step-by-steps here together.

1. Draw and cut all patterns needed. These include coral, fish, eyes, and oyster.

2. There are four red fish cut-outs and two orange fish cut-outs.

3. Cut short strips of ribbon and lightly burn the raw edges to prevent fraying. Sew ribbons onto the back of the fish as shown in picture. Stick the front and the back of the fish together using a glue gun.   Next, attach the eyes of the fishes. Sew the pieces together for reinforcement if desired. 

4. Glue two piece of oyster cut-outs (beige colour) together and hand-sew the decorative stitches. Glue the inside of the oyster (pink colour) onto the back of the oyster (dark brown). Then, sew a pearl bead (faux pearl, of course, haha) and your oyster is almost ready.

5. Cut two piece of "seabed".

6. Run a ribbon through the back of the fishes to create "slides".

7. Arrange all items for the page to get a rough idea of how the page will look like later.

8. Stick both ends of the "slides" onto the pages, one end on one page.

9. Using a glue gun, stick all other items onto the pages so as to cover up the ends of the ribbon.

10. Hand-sew the bottom of the shell (I sew mine to resemble a mini oval shape as shown in picture) onto the oyster to create a flap.

Yay! The pages is now ready for binding! Stay tuned for my future post on how to bind quiet book pages together!

Quiet Book Page: Fish Puzzle

This is another page from my "Under the Sea" quiet book. Let's get started.

1. Draw and cut template. 

2. Using a glue gun, assemble the patterns on your fish. I did mine in thick and thin strips.

3. Now glue the front and back of the fish together.

4. Cut the fish into three parts, or as many as you like based on your fish design.

5. Hand-sew outline of the fish puzzle piece on your page. I place a piece of puzzle on my page as I sew. Once I'm done, I switch to the next piece and start sewing again. The stitches do not need to look perfect. That's the beauty of hand-stitching, no? I call these perfectly imperfect stitches! Haha. And trust me, tiny humans wont't even notice it.

6. I machine sew along the edges of all pieces. You may hand stitch if you don't have a machine. It's fine too if you prefer not to stitch. Just make sure the front and back piece of the fish puzzle is strongly glued together.

7. Lastly, attach velcro on the back of the puzzle pieces and on the quiet book page.

There you go, a nice fish puzzle page.