The Quiet Book I made for my niece’s Christmas present was my major Christmas project. I started it in October and only finished it just before Christmas. It took many many hours of work and also cost quite a bit in materials (despite using lots of fabric I already had). But it was worth it I think. I am very proud of it (despite it being far from perfect) and she is enjoying a lot it and hopefully will do for years to come (I plan to update the pages as she gets older).
So, first of all, here is my Quiet Book.
Playdough shape matching page
There is one of each shape in each colour
Face making page
There are about 3 different eyes, noses and mouths,
she can make happy, sad and angry faces to help with
her emotional understanding
Aliens Love Underpants page
The aliens are hiding behind bushes and the pants can
be taken off the washing line and stuck on any alien
This is just a simple clasps page so she can play
with different fastenings
Incy Wincy Spider climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out
Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain
Gruffalo page
I wrote The Gruffalo words into a little hand-made
bookletand she can act it out with the finger puppets
How I Made It
There are plenty of websites and blogs that can give you far better instructions than I can on making a quiet book. These are the ones that I used.
I got ideas on page content and information about the technical bits of making the book but in the end I designed my own pages (some more influenced by my research than others) as that was easier to do than trying to find specific materials and also I could tailor them to my niece’s interests. I asked my sister about what she liked before I started (she didn't know what I was making) and she told me she liked Aliens Love Underpants, and Incy Wincy Spider book she had, mirrors and faces, playdough and some other stuff I couldn't fit into the book. It's me who loves The Gruffalo but I'm sure she will too!
Here’s the specifics about my book if you’re interested (everything else can be found on the pages linked above):
- The pages have 3 eyelets each and they attach to the cover using book rings (found at Staples) which means that the pages are removable and can be replaced as she grows out of them.
- The cover is made of denim so hopefully will be fairly durable.
- I used Velcro for most of the removable pieces as it was easy to sew on and should be easy for her to stick on and pull off. I’ve seen some that used poppers but I thought they would be harder for her little fingers and also more expensive to buy a load of than just getting a strip of Velcro, especially as I only had to use tiny pieces of Velcro.
- I used some old fabric I found in my parents attic for the pages, it’s quite stiff and kind of canvassy but unfortunately I don’t actually know what it is! I didn’t need anything to strengthen this, two pieces sewed back to back and the fabric making up the pictures on the front made stiff enough pages.
- The mini pegs on the Aliens Love Underpants page were from Amazon but I wouldn’t recommend them, I think I will need to replace them with Velcro as they were already falling apart over Christmas. I’m not sure if they were just bad quality pegs or if it’s because they are so small.
