Monday, March 7, 2011

Tutorial : Quiet Busy Book - Part 1



Lots of my freinds have seen my photos of the Busy/Quiet book I made my neice for Christmas and have asked for tutorials or patterns. I'm hoping to get a group of people together on the Facebook group "Simply Splendid Sew-Along" to make a set of books. Either each person makes a book or each person make several copies of a page or two and shares with the other participants. Whichever, I still need some instructions...

Step one
Decide what activites you want in the book.
Good activities include:
Buttons
Buckles
Matching
zippers
lacing
Counting
Manipulating things
Braiding
Anything you can think of that would keep little hands busy or teach a skill. Preferably QUIET activities... :D

Step two
Brainstorm ideas to accompish the goals and sketch the plans. Keep in mind that what works for one child may not work for another. A girl might like flowers with buttons, but a boy might like vehicle tires to button on and off. One might like cats, the next might like dogs. One would like a shoe for laceing, the next might like a football. Keep your mind open!

Step three
Make a supplies list and find them!
I would suggest making the pages 13x14 inches. This will leave lots of room for gromets and seams and the page. The cover should be a touch bigger.

Step four
Create your beautiful book!

There are LOTS of ideas out there... Just google quiet book template or quiet book ideas and see what comes up. I'll post the general how to for the pages I made along with as much of the source material I can find about where I saw it or where I found the templates in the next few days. Here's my pages as a preview:









Stay tuned!

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