Tutorial : Quiet Busy Book - Part 4

Lock and Tic Tac Toe

This page is intended to work on fine motor skills (insert and turn key, put lock on ring) and have a fun game!

Materials
felt or interfaced fabric for the back of the page.
interfaced felt for the chest to hold pieces
ribbon for the tic tac toe grid and to hold the lock on the page.
ring for the lock to loop on.
felt pieces for the game.

1) prepare the "Treasure Chest" I interfaced some felt so it had extra strength and then cut it into two pieces, a lid and a body. Cut a hole in the lid suitable for the key ring. Next sew along all edges to provide extra enforcement. Stitch down on the page. Do the bottom first, remember to leave the top open! Then just stitch the top of the lid. Hand sew the ring on.
2) Prepare the lock. Securely attach ribbon to the lock and key. I tied and glued it. Tie knots in the lengths of ribbon remaining to ensure it wont' get tangled our caught.
3) Cut ribbon of suitable lengths for the Tic Tac Toe grid and sew it down.
4) Cut pieces of contrasting felt to use as Tic Tac Toe pieces.
5) When we get to sewing the pages together, don't forget to insert the ends of the lock and key ribbons into the seam of the page!

Magnet Page

This page is intended to explore magnetism and fine motor control.

Materials
felt or interfaced fabric for the back of the page.
Clear plastic table cloth (same stuff as the photo page)
Magnets
Items to go under the plastic. I put metal buttons, a fishing lure and a wooden sheep with a magnet on the back. The sheep seemed to work the best.
Ribbon
Edging material (I chose felt)

1) It is extremely frustrating and moderately ugly to sew directly on to the plastic stuff. I strongly suggest having ribbon or felt or fabric between the presser foot and the plastic.
2) Cut a square of plastic table cloth stuff 10-11 inches square.
3) Cut edging material to go around the full edge of the plastic.
4) Lay it out and sew it down on 3 sides.
5) Sew some ribbon on top of the plastic to provide a bit of a maze. I did it pretty simplistically (just two little lines), but you can be much more elaborate.
6) Insert your items and sew it shut!
7) The magnet wand needs to be made semi child resistant. How you go about doing this will depend on the magnets you choose. I piled the magnets up with glue between each layer and then tied ribbon around the whole works with extra glue. I also chose not to sew this into the page edge and just put it in the ring. That way it can easily be removed if it's damaged or deemed not to be appropriate yet.

I purposely put these pages next to each other to encourage magnet use on things like the lock.

Tutorial : Quiet Busy Book - Part 3

Kitty collar page

This page is intended to work on different buckling techniques.
Materials
Felt for page or interfaced fabric. Approx 13x14 inch.
Fabric for cats. I used fleece.
Collars. One per cat. preferably different ones.
Eyes. Find sew on ones!
Embroidery floss.
Ear fabric.

1) Find a suitable template. I used this cat as my inspiration. Feel free to find a dog or rabbit or anything else!
2) Cut out your critters! Stitch on faces and ears. I just free handed it...
3) Stitch your critters down. Make sure to leave spaces to put the collars through!
4) Put your collars on!

Photo Page

Materials
Felt for page or interfaced fabric. Approx 13x14 inch.
Felt for the house. Wall, roof, something for ground.
Other decorations. I thought flowers or a sun would be cute but didn't do it.
Clear plastic table cloth for 'windows'.
Buttons for 'handles'.
Some photos.

1) Cut out your house shape, including door and windows.
2) overlay it on to the clear table cloth stuff.
3) Stitch around the the doors and windows. This will hold everything in place.
4) time to stitch it onto the background! Stitch the two sides and bottom down. Leave the top open to allow for changing of the pictures. Depending on your tablecloth stuff, you may need to partially stitch around the doors and windows to hold the photos still. Some of it is very static and you won't need to.
5) Stitch the roof down. Just do the top, leave the bottom open so it folds over the house.
6) Stitch the ground down. Cover the bottom of the house.
7) Add any embellishments. A sun, flowers, puppy, whatever you'd like!
8) Stitch the knobs on the windows and doors.
9) Put your photos in!

Tutorial : Quiet Busy Book - Part 2

I'll do these guides to making quiet book pages two at a time. It will be a quick and easy page and a more time consuming or complex page.

Flower page

This page is intended to work on color matching, buttons, bows and creativity.
Materials:
Felt for page or interfaced fabric. Approx 13x14 inch.
Felt for 5 flowers (10 colors) approx 3 inch square.
Felt for flower pot.
Ribbon for flower stems and pot decoration.
5 buttons to match the felt for flowers.
Thread.

1) Find a suitable flower template. I used one like this
flower template.
2)Cut the flowers out. I made each flower with two similar colors, so my niece could flip the flowers over and see something different. So a light pink and a dark pink, light blue and dark blue.
3) Cut your stem ribbon and insert it into the flower pairs and stitch them together. Cut a button hole and stitch around the hole.
4) Cut out a pot shape. Stitch it together if needed. Add the decorative ribbon. The ribbon on this page can be untied and tied to practice knots and bows.
5) Arrange everything on the page and decide if it's what you like. Remember to leave more room on one side for the binding.
6) Stitch the buttons down. Button the flowers on and stitch the stems where the pot will be. Then stitch the pot down, leaving the top open so it can be used as a pocket.

I did alot of hand stitching on this page. It would be a much faster page if you choose to use a machine to put the flowers together.

Rainbow page

This page is designed to work on colors, counting and fine motor control through sliding objects.
Materials:
Rainbow fabric. I found a fat quarter that worked great!
Interfacing.
Various ribbon colours.
Various bead colours. I found a mixed pack of non toxic wooden beads at the dollar store.

1) Iron the interfacing onto the fabric.
2) Cut the fabric to size.
3) Cut 10 inch pieces of ribbon.
4) Space the ribbon out on the page so it looks good. Remember to leave more room on one side for the binding.
5) Stitch down one side of all ribbons.
6) Add the beads and stitch down the other side.

I'm a nerd, so I decided that I'd arrange the beads in order of what's in the Rainbow. The longer the wavelength, the more beads!
I made this page fairly late in my project, but wish I had done it earlier. Mostly because I discovered that I liked how the interfaced fabric worked compared to the felt. I would have done far more pages this way!

Some inspiration of similar pages (some have button wheels...):
Tidbits
simply complicated
leafy tree top spot

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!