My Quiet Book

My mom made the greatest things for me when I was little. I have such great memories of them now. One of my favorites was a felt quiet book that she made for us to look at during church. Last year I signed up to make a quiet book for my girls with a group from church. It was taking a lot of time, and the truth is, I didn't really like it. It wasn't even half as cool as the one my mom made. So, I trashed that one and decided I was going to design my own. Well, it has been over a year in the making (working on it a little here and there) but it is finished at last! Unlike my mom, however, I cheated and used a number of pre-made things on some of the pages. I think it turned out pretty cute though and hopefully is sturdy enough to make it through a few kids... we'll see about that. In case it doesn't, I decided to make a record of it.

The animals were these little ribbon bookmarks I found. You can pull their feet and they slide down into the boat. The dove fits in the pocket or in the sky with velcro.

The farm animals are foam stickers, double thick. They fit in the barn (the door is a big pocket) or you can arrange them around the farm on different velcro spots.

I found the terry cloth duck pouch and sewed foam numbers into plastic circles to make the bubbles. The bubbles also fit inside the "rubber ducky".

I "felted" an old wool sweater and used it for this notebook pocket and the pencil pouch. The best part was that the zipper was already part of the sweater so this was the easiest page of all.

Aren't the ladybug and flower buttons the cutest things? I crocheted the flowers and they button on or off around the little flower buttons. You can match the flowers to their background colors, or mix the colors to "grow your garden" any way you want. The ladybugs don't come off (even though Ava sure has tried) but are just there to look cute.

This page is really similar to one in the book my mom made with a worm that lives in an apple. She made her worm out of felt but this one is just different sizes of pompoms strung together... he is really soft though.

This is E's favorite page. You can turn the wheel at the top of the page to change the weather outside, and then pick an outfit for bear. I found the foam bear shapes, and made the outfits. They attach to bear with magnet strips.

I'll probably just carry it in our ginormous diaper bag, but after I had finished it I decided to add a handle down the side so it could be easily carried on its own if I wanted.