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Home » sewing » Quiet Book Feature

Quiet Book Feature

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Don’t we all (me included) dream of making an amazing quiet book?  Here’s a run-down from a friend, Kendra, who tackled one.  She did it as a craft exchange and it looks great!  She’s been kind enough to share some Quiet Book Ideas and info with us.

Why NOT to make a Quiet Book

I had often seen the so – called “Quiet Books” being used to entertain kids during church meetings… and I always admired them from afar. I secretly wanted to have one for my children however, I KNEW that there was NO WAY that I could ever make one of them. Because…
a. I am NOT a seamstress.
b. I am not “crafty” or “creative”
c. I am a perfectionist and never satisfied with the end product anyway
d. I am notoriously NOT a craft “finisher”. I get excited about projects… get started and then… get overwhelmed… lose momentum… and never finish.

Anyway, to make a long story short – this last semester I decided to prove myself wrong – and COMPLETE a Quiet Book.

Quiet Book Exchange

-A friend and I organized a “Quiet Book Exchange” and we looked through LOTS of Quiet Book page ideas and templates; we chose our favorite 18 pages.

-Next, we rounded up a group of 9 women – who committed to make 2 Quiet Book pages nine times each.

-Finally, we set a deadline – the date for the page swap, so that we could all exchange our finished pages and end up with a complete set of the 18 pages.

We decided to do the “Quiet Book Exchange” to try to simplify the project (if you do a page once then it is easier to do it the next 8 times), save some money by “mass producing”, and also encourage us to get it done on time since other people are counting on us. The whole concept worked out wonderfully.

Quiet book page ideas to make

 

Quiet Book Covers

The Quiet Book front cover.
Look! I learned how to sew a button hole!

quiet book cover idea The back cover.
make a quiet book cover

Quiet Book Ideas

The two pages that I contributed to the Quiet Book Exchange.
The shoe page.
I got to learn how to put eyelets in. Fun stuff.

quiet book shoe page lacing The train page.

train idea for a quiet book These are the beautiful pages that my friends contributed.
The Noah’s Ark page.

ark idea for quiet book The car page.

make a quiet book road page ideaThe tic-tac-toe page.

quiet book tic tac toe board idea The lift-a-flap house page.

Lift five flaps to reveal family pictures placed inside of plastic pockets.

quiet book house with flaps idea The bead counting page.

quiet book bead counting idea The flower page.

The flowers come on and off the buttons.

quiet book flowers button page ideaThe shapes page.

This page uses snaps to match the shapes to their outline.

quiet book snaps shape matchingThe find the bone page.

Four different hidden pockets are all great hiding places for the dog’s bone.

quiet book puppy idea The memory page.
quiet book memory game pageThe ice cream cone page.

6 different ice cream flavors can be hooked on and off of the ice cream cone to make delicious combinations.

quiet book ice cream idea The braid page.

quiet book yarn braiding idea The gumball machine page.

The gumballs come off and velcro back on to a matching circle of the same color.

quiet book gumballs page idea The puzzle page.

Two different puzzles are stored in the pocket and put together on the puzzle board.

quiet book puzzle idea The mailbox page.

The mailbox opens and there is a felt envelope inside that you can really open and put a note inside.

quiet book note mailbox page idea The baseball mitt page.

The baseball velcros into place on the mitt – and the kids can put their hands in the glove to “catch” it.

During the “Quiet Book page idea finding process” I fell in love with some additional pages that we didn’t assign out to anyone in the group (mostly because they were too time intensive to ask someone to make NINE of them) – but I decided to go ahead and make them as “extra” pages for Isaac’s own Quiet Book.
The flower vase page.
The flowers come in and out of the pastic pocket vase.

quiet book flowers in a vase idea The barn page.

felt quiet book barn idea The barn doors open to reveal these 5 homemade finger puppets.

felt barn animals finger puppets The clothing/paper doll page.

Clothes from the laundry lines are used to dress the dolls on the right.

felt doll quiet book page idea

Quiet Book Instructions

If you are wanting to make your own Quiet Book… here is what we did.
1. We used unbleached muslin pages and cut them 10 1/2″ x 12″ (planning for a 1/2″ seam allowance).
2. We used heavyweight pellon interfacing to try to make the pages sturdier.
3. We came up with the page ideas, found a few templates, and found general page construction guidelines by just searching blogs online. Primarily we referenced…
https://quietbook.blogspot.com * she has links to LOTS of helpful Quiet Book posts online *
https://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com *the templates for the barn and mailbox pages came directly from her website*
4. For the most part we just saw pictures that we liked of Quiet Book pages and tried our best to figure out how to recreate something similar to it.

My Quiet Book Thoughts:

In a nutshell, this project took SO MUCH TIME – that I started to wonder if I was really just inventing a big project that was wasting my time. I started to think that I had gotten myself in over my head and that this wasn’t worth the time going into it – and that I should find more worthwhile things to do with my life! But… then I started thinking about all that I was learning. I learned SO MUCH from this project and am truly grateful for it.
First, I learned new technical sewing skills. I gained a LOT of confidence in myself and my own ability to create and do well at it. I gained confidence in my ability to learn new skills and to just try new things. I learned more creativity and problem solving. I learned how to plan out and organize the pages. I learned how to be thrifty in finding ways to complete the pages.
Second, I learned valuable organizational and group leadership life lessons.
Third, I learned to relax a little on my perfectionism. Each task was taking me SO long because I am SUCH a perfectionist. Then I said aloud to myself one day “completion is better than perfection” and that became my Quiet Book Mantra. I learned that in some things in life (a Quiet Book-esque project being one of those things) COMPLETION is sincerely better than perfection. It doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to fulfill its job. It’s more important to get it done and move on with other life tasks than to sit still and agonize over every painstaking little detail.
Fourth, I learned a bit more about contentment. When you do this kind of a project with a group – pages undoubtedly turn out differently than you had envisioned (especially if you are the group organizer and actually spent time envisioning the final product). But in the end – it didn’t matter at all! I love all of the pages – and more importantly – Isaac loves them! I am perfectly content and proud of the final product. Sometimes in life (with things like Quiet Books especially) – it is important for me to learn to let go, loosen up, and simply be happy.

Whew – my goal when I started the Quiet Book process was to give a FINISHED product to Isaac for Christmas. And guess what?? I did it!!!! I may have sewn the Quiet Book cover on Christmas Eve morning… but it is done! I set a goal, faced the overwhelming, worked consistently on it, didn’t give up, and I achieved it. Looks like I might just be a “finisher” after all. 🙂
–Kendra

Just reading her post inspires me to want to make one – she makes it seem so doable.  How about you??

UPDATE:  Here are some other great sites where lots of ideas come from:

https://craftychiclyric.blogspot.com/2009/07/girls-quiet-book.html

 

*Naptime had a really cute cover

Quiet book page ideas
Hope you enjoyed these Quiet Book Ideas!  Have fun creating your own!

About Mandy Beyeler

Mandy is a craft blogger who loves to blog and enjoys all things crafty, sewing, and DIY - she feels that if she can do something, you can too, and provides tutorials to help you along the way. She loves being a mom to 4 awesome kiddos and blogs from the Kansas City Area.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  4. polwig says

    Holy Moly… this is beautiful. I am retweeting, facebooking, stumbling etc. I can only imagine how long it took. I wonder if you can make it a school year long project and tie it into weekly theme. Like read Rapunzel and making the braided girl etc.

  6. Liz says

    WOW! This is pretty cool! Thanks for the great idea!

    I hope you’ll come participate in my link party today! It runs all week so come back and add more BOY projects! All About The Boy @ The Nifty Nest!

    Liz

  11. Haupi says

    That was so precious and I love your little eyelets on the sneakers. Now this is really a different craft idea – or at least it is to me. Thanks for the tutorial too!

    Haupi

  17. Meg says

    Whaaaat?!? This looks amazing! I want to play with this quiet book! 🙂

    Thank you for linking up to my Friday link party! Hope to see you back next week!

  20. Gwen @ Gwenny Penny says

    These are fantastic. The pages look amazing. I especially like the sneaker page, the bead counting page, and the paper doll page. It looks like a ton of work, but it was worth it… they’re beautiful!

  21. Amy says

    I have been wanting to make a quiet book for my little girl and my niece. I have heard they are extremely time consuming…thus I have been putting it off. Maybe I can find some friends and we can do an exchange. This is a great idea! This would be a fun blog exchange. Everybody make two identical pages…and then we could swap with another blogger. Hum, something to think about! Thanks for sharing!

  22. Corrie says

    I made one 14 ago & it’s lasted through all 4 kids. They are so worth it. Looking forward to making them for grandkids someday way down the road. Thanks for sharing your quiet book!

  24. Jessamy says

    AMAZING! My friends and I just started a craft group that will meet a few nights a month. Our first project: A Quiet Book! Any chance you have a template for the people and clothes?

  28. the groaties says

    I would LOVE to set up an exchange and make one of these, but I’m having a hard time hunting down the tutorials for all these. Digging through the links provided is pretty difficult and the templates look different than the one your friend used. I want to make one that looks just like this! Any help would be amazing!

  30. Mary says

    Imagine our life blog has some awesome quiet book pages. She even tells what she used & a bit about how she sewed the pages. I will say her pages seemed quite detailed & will probably take a good bit of time commitment to make them but if they turn out as well as hers they are sure to please.

Trackbacks

  2. […] Sew a small square of felt into one corner with the other end of the ribbon trapped underneath.  This Elmo busy book page is complete!  It is now ready for your busy book!  Get the details on pulling the entire book together soon!  If you are looking for even more page ideas, be sure to check out this quiet book feature on Sugar Bee Crafts. […]