The Much Awaited and Anticipated!

The pictures of the quiet books. Sorry the quality isn't that great, I did the best with what I had, so hopefully you enjoy the pictures. I have posted the links at the bottom of the post of all the sites I used as templates. I am SO grateful to all those who are willing to share their work online and make it free for the rest of us to use! There are some really cute quiet books on Etsy, but I didn't want to pay for a pattern so I used what I could find. there are still many more pages I want to do, but I think I am going to take my time working on those. :) Remember that I did two sets of these, which is why it took so long, but I am sure it was worth it as my cute nephews are probably putting it to good use.

My pages were made with Muslin and then a cotton layer to make the pages thicker. You could always go with Cotton or even Felt. The Muslin wrinkles really easily, but it is much cheaper than the others. I also chose to do a simple cover with just a one button closure. My pages are sewn with three button holes and held together with binder rings found at Office Max. This was the cheapest way that I found to bind the book but still be able to trade pages out, or when we have more kids hand a few pages to each child to play with.

Simple Button Closure and Three Ring Binding

Button The Flowers

Alphabet (Velcro)

Time For Church

Match The Shapes (Snaps)

Puzzles Three different puzzles stored on the opposite page

Noah's Ark I bought Noah at the $1 Store and then a package of Dinosaurs. I searched for some cheap animals but couldn't find them anywhere, so there were dinosaurs on the Ark.

Warm your Hand

Tic Tac Toe

Look in the Tent with a teddy bear inside (Zipper)

Pick the Apples (Snaps)

Who's in the Barn? Chicken, Pig, Cow Finger Puppets

Counting (Velcro)

Write a Letter

Mail a Letter

3...2....1..... Blast OFF!

Make a Phone Call (Gavin LOVES this page) Traffic Light

Lace the Football (Shoelace) Weave the Tower

Each book has this on the inside cover. :)

I was trying to make the books as cheaply as possible but still good quality. With that said, basically all my pages are done with felt, aside from the muslin base. Many of the examples I found were very intricate and beautiful, but I just didn't feel that I needed to spend that much money on extra fabric to make them that way. I also did not have a ton of scraps on hand when I started this project, which probably would help with the extra details.

I hand-stitched all of the titles on each page. This idea came from Homemade by Jill, link below, I really thought it was a great touch, as I am not a big fan of writing the titles on (just my preference). I just wrote the titles in pencil and then stitched over them. The writing isn't perfect, but I really like that detail. WARNING: this is very time consuming I think it took me about an hour to handstitch each page, which is about 30 hours of just stitching, not including everything else.

Sites used: (I used different pages from all the sites, but there quite a few to choose from on each one.)

Homemade by Jill

You can also click on quietbooks on her side bar and see many amazing pages from her book. She has 14 different quietbook posts. I used the Rocket, Barn, and Mailbox templates. Her pages are truly amazing.

Oopsey Daisy

At the bottom of her post there is a link to print off 9 templates. I only used her template for Noah's Ark, but she has a McDonald's Hamburger, Mr. Potato Head, Phone, Gumball Machine, Ice Cream Cone, Chick a Chick a Boom Boom and Stop Light. SO Cute! I definitely want to make some of these later.

How to Make a Quiet Book

Tons of pages to use, with links to many other sites where you can see examples and find templates. I used the numbers page, and used to the apple tree, ABC's and flower page as an example for my own. The Picnic basket and Mail pages are also really cute!

How to Make an LDS Quiet Book

Quiet Book Instructions

I used the traffic light, football, mitten, clock, phone, and shapes pages from here.

Modest Maven

This the blog from the link above, you can see her completed pages here, her choice of fabric is great!

Serving Pink Lemonade

I did not use this site because I did not find it until after. But there are some really cute ideas. I also like the playmats, I want to make some for Gavin. She also has photos for an ABC reverent book that would be great to use during the sacrament and SO cheap just to print the photos a Wal-Mart or something.

Just want to give a Shout Out to my sister-in-law Amanda who helped me tons when she was here in November and also to my Mom who helped me when she was here for Christmas, I could not have finished these without you!

And a SUPER Shout Out to Zac for all of the late nights sewing and the many hours spent sitting at the table while you took care of Gavin. I LOVE YOU!

And just because we need an updated picture of my boys. :)

Super Fly! I took this picture and thought, "Where did my baby go?"

These two are the Best Buds!

Whew! That took MUCH longer than expected!