Quiet Book - Mr. Potatohead - Pages 6 & 7

 For this page, I used a bunch of different color felts, some Wonder Under and 2 Pellon Pages.  I also used some of those nifty felt letters that I had left over from the counting pages to decorate the accessory box.  

I found a few Mr. Potatohead templates online.  You can check one of them out here.

I did Mr. Potatohead first by using the template to cut out the hands and body in Wonder Under and then ironing it to the tan felt, fusing him to the Pellon page, then sewing around the edges.  I wanted to make his arms white, but since the background was white I opted to use the same color as the potato part.  

I also used the template to cut out different accessories (eyes, lips, mustaches, shoes, hats, etc) in different color felts.  I decided not to use anything to attach the accessories to the potato because felt kind of sticks to itself.  

To make Mr. Potatohead's accessory box, I cut out a long rectangle out of black felt (because I had a lot of that color) so that I could fold it over and have the box.  I cut 3 slits in the back part of the box and then sewed around the edges of the back part of the box as well as two other times across about an inch and half under the top two slits.  

To finish it off, I fused some velcro on the bottom of the box to hold it shut and added the felt letters.  


  

Quiet Book - Brush the Dog's Teeth - Page 12

 The original idea for this page on Pinterest was of a monkey whose teeth you could brush.  My daughter just isn't that into monkeys, but she does love dogs.  I figured I should include at least one in my quiet book, so monkey became dog.  It's not really a great dog, but my daughter recognizes it as a dog and that's what matters most, right?

I used purple, white, black, beige, tan, brown, light pink, and dark pink felts, wonder under, matching thread, my Pellon page, and one set of fusible velcro.  

The first thing I did was make the toothbrush.  I cut 2 matching long pieces of Wonder Under, ironed them to purple felt and cut them out.  Then I cut one rectangular piece of Wonder Under, ironed it to white felt, cut it out, and fused it onto the white felt again creating a thicker double layer for the bristles.  I then sandwiched the white felt piece between the two purple pieces and fused them together so the white bristles were held in place. Fused a piece of velcro on the back and sewed around the edges.  Easy peasy.  

The dog was much more complicated.  

I started by cutting a head shape out of the Wonder Under.  I ironed only the top half of the Wonder Under to the beige felt, and cut out an entire head of beige using the Wonder Under to guide me for the bottom half.  

Then I stuck the tan felt between the Wonder Under and beige felt and ironed it to the bottom half of the Wonder Under head. 

 Then, I cut the tan felt.  The tan will be the bottom part of the mouth, while the beige will be the top part of the mouth and head. 

With the Wonder Under, I cut a tongue, ironed it to the bright pink felt and cut it out.

Then I cut out of the Wonder Under, the light pink inside of the mouth.

 

I took the paper off of the light pink piece and fused it to the open mouth piece.  

Now this is the tedious part - I cut out 19 tooth pieces from the Wonder Under, ironed it to the white felt, then fused them into the mouth.  10 on top, 9 on the bottom leaving a gap for the tongue.  

 Then I cut out an ear piece of the Wonder Under, mirrored it for the other ear, ironed them to the brown felt and fused them onto my Pellon page.

Last was the fun part of actually making it look more like a dog.  I fused the dog's head onto the page along with the tongue.  I used Wonder Under to cut out and fuse the tan pieces for the eyes, the black eyes, and the nose.  Then I sewed the edges in matching thread.  I didn't bother with sewing the eyes, nose, or teeth.  Last, but not least, I added the other piece of velcro to the top to hold the toothbrush when it's not in use.  

Quiet Book - Sea Puzzle - Pages 14 & 15

In my quiet book research, I found tons of "puzzles" where you match colors or shapes.  Since my girl is super into fish and turtles right now, I decided to do an ocean scene.  

I used lots of different colored felt, Wonder Under, my 2 Pellon pages, and fusible velcro.  I found some good patterns of sea animals here.  

The first thing I did was use the Wonder Under to fuse the turquoise ocean water to the pages.  

Then, I started off working with the whale because it was the simplest of all of the shapes.  I traced the whale twice on the Wonder Under, once one direction, and then one the mirror image.  

I picked which direction I wanted it to go on the page and fused it on.  Then I fused a piece of velcro onto it. 

For the whale puzzle piece, I took my other whale piece and fused it to more light blue felt and cut that out.  Then I put the other piece of fusible velcro on the bottom side of the whale and added an eye with a sharpy. 

Since it worked out pretty well, I did much the same thing with all of my other sea life.  

On my Wonder Under, I traced one forward and one reverse of the pattern for all of the animals.  For the fish that had multiple parts, I actually traced each part individually once going the opposite of the direction I wanted it on the puzzle, then cut out the pieces and taped them together and traced one forwards and one backwards.  For the turtle, I did the same as the whale, but then I also traced an extra shell. 

Then I cut out all of the Wonder Under pieces and ironed them onto the appropriate colored felts.  Cutting some of these shapes is super tedious! 

Then I cut out all of my felt shapes. Again - tedious!

I fused one version of each onto the background and then fused velcro onto those pieces.  I used the hook part of the vecro on the bottom so that the separated fish wouldn't get stuck to everything.  

For the Octopus, I did the same thing as the whale - fuse the leftover octopus to more grey felt and cut that out, fuse on a piece of velcro.

The turtle was also very similar - fuse the leftover turtle onto another piece of green felt and cut it out.  Then I fused on the shell on top and the velcro on the bottom.

The fish were a bit more of a challenge.  I took the whole fish and took the paper off of just the top fin.  Then I pulled the paper off of my yellow top fin and fused them together.  It's probably a no no to have 2 layers of Wonder Under together, but it worked fine for me.  I kept going until I had fused each piece onto the whole fish, doing the body last.  

Then I sewed all of the pieces (pretty terribly) with matching thread if I had it to finish them off.  I only sewed the top part of the water background because the sides will get sewn when I put the pages together. 


 

Quiet Book - Ballet Slipper - Page 13

I didn't have a whole lot of time today, so I went with an easier page.  All I needed was some light pink ribbon, light pink felt, my Pellon page, some Wonder Under, and of course some pink thread for my sewing machine.  

I used the template for the shoe that I found here, traced it onto my Wonder Under, cut it out and ironed it to my pink felt.  Cut it out, took off the paper backing, and fused it to the white background.  

The rest of it was all about pinning the ribbon and then sewing it.  I made sure to leave my ribbon extra long and then cut it once I was finished.  Also, I burned the ends so that they wouldn't fray.  

It will be a while before my daughter is ready to practice tying things, but she LOVES ribbon, so I think she'll enjoy it now too. 

Quiet Book - Duck in an Egg - Page 1

Today's quiet book page was pretty easy.  All it took was some background felt, yellow felt for the duck, orange felt for his beak and feet and stiff white felt for the egg.

I used Wonder Under to attach the pink background to the white Pellon page.  I couldn't use white because I wanted the egg to be white.  

Then I found this perfect pattern for a duck here so I printed it and traced the duck pieces onto my Wonder Under, cut them out, and fused them to the pink background.  

Next, I traced onto my stiff white felt an egg that would cover the entire duck, cut it out and cut in half with a zig zag.  

To finish it up, I put an eye on the duck, sewed the top and bottom edge of the egg to the page and added a stick on butterfly.  

Quiet Book - Ladybug - Page 8

I found the idea for this cute little ladybug on http://jocelynandjason.blogspot.com.  The dots on the ladybug are snaps so you can take them off and then put them into the zippered compartment. 

For this project I needed a page and a half of black felt, a page of red felt, a zipper and 8 snaps of size 2/0 (as well as my 8x10 Pellon page and some Wonder Under)

The first thing I did was draw a ladybugish shape on my Wonder Under, cut it out, iron it to the black felt and cut that out. 

Then I taped the red felt to the wonder under side so that I could cut to match the ladybug. I did this for both of the red wings.  

Then I peeled off the paper part of the Wonder Under and Ironed (with my damp cloth) to attach the black ladybug to my Pellon page.  

Next, I cut out 16 black circles by tracing one of my spools of thread.   

This was my first attempt at sewing a zipper.  Doing it on a project like this made it a lot less intimidating.  It seemed to go pretty well.  Then I marked where I wanted my ladybug's dots and hand sewed the snaps on.     

The next step was to sew the winged part onto the black ladybug.  This was actually a bit more of a challenge than I expected.  A page of Pellon and 2 layers of felt caused my sewing machine to have some problems.  Probably has something to do with a setting I had it on or the foot I was using or something.  Sure wish I could remember everything they went over in our classes.   The other problem was that the felt stretches as you sew it so even if it looks like it's going to line up perfectly, by the end it's a little off.  Then I added some antennae and some little stick on ladybugs.  These seem to hold a lot better than the butterflies I worked with yesterday. 
 

 
Next step was to work on the dots.  After sewing 8 snaps on the ladybug wings, I was not super excited to sew anymore snaps.  It's a tedious job, but these seemed to go a little faster.  Perhaps it's because I was cooking dinner at the same time (cauliflower crust pizza - yum!) so I had lots of little breaks between snaps.

 

After sewing on snaps on 8 of the dots, you'll have 8 dots left over.  For those dots, I ironed on some Wonder Under. 

After cutting them out and peeling off the paper, I put them back to back with the dots that had the snaps.  Make sure you don't cover up the snap part.  I actually did make that mistake on one of them.  Oops. 

Quiet Book - Counting - Pages 10 & 11

The counting pages

All out of 2s, need to go back to the store...

Shopping - I picked out some ribbon that was thick enough for my felt numbers to fit on and matched the beads that I found on sale.  I also bought some thick string that looked like it could be sewn to attach it to the top and bottom.  This is the string I used - it actually worked quite well.

I cut 4 pieces of ribbon that were about 7 inches long. 

I also cut some Wonder Under to the same size as the ribbons and ironed the rough side onto the ribbons.  

Then I cut some string that was longer than I would need and pinned it to the bottoms of the pages.  You can probably see that I experimented with measurements.  On my sheet, the first string is at 1 3/4 inch, and then I spaced them out about 1 1/2 inch apart.  

Then I attached the string with my sewing machine.  First, I did a quick sew across the string so I could take out the pin.  Then I flattened the string and sewed about half an inch in forward and reverse so it would hold really well.  Luckily I didn't need it to look really nice since it will be covered by the ribbon.  

Next, I took the paper backing off of Wonder Under of one of the ribbons and (using the damp cloth) ironed the ribbon over the ends of the strings.  Once that was dry, I sewed the sides of the ribbon.  Next time I'll get plain ribbon that doesn't already have a decorative top and bottom so that I can sew around the entire ribbon.

Then I added the beads and pinned the string at the top.  I kept having to repin them because they seemed to get too tight and bent the Pellon.  When I sewed them in, they got even tighter, so I had to sit these pages under books to try to get them to flatten back out.  If you try this, make sure you that your string isn't stretched too tight.  

I cut off the extra string, then repeated the whole process of attaching the ribbon, added the numbers and a couple of butterflies for decoration.  Unfortunately these butterflies didn't stick as well as the hearts and numbers.  They'll come off the second my daughter sees them.  She loves her "buh buhs".