If you’ve been following along on our site over the years, you’ve probably noticed a few posts on quiet books. I’m a big fan of making these wonderful books to occupy my kids while making learning fun. My preferred medium is felt as I find great enjoyment in hand-sewing. Felt is simple to hand-sew and very forgiving if you make a mistake.
I made Little J his very own quiet book as a Christmas gift last year. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be showing off the variety of pages I assembled for him. First up is an under the sea counting page. As he is not yet two, it’s a simple page to help him learn the numbers 1-5.
I love to incorporate a number of things into my quiet book pages when possible. As Little J was only 16 months when I gave him this book, I wanted to include a lot of textures. I started by choosing my colours of felt: a lovely teal for the ocean and a grainy brown felt for the sand. I free-handed the shape of the sand. I then pulled out some of my animal beads that had an underwater theme: fish, turtles, seals, dolphins and whales in a variety of colours. They were strung onto a thin satin ribbon and sewn onto the page. As the beads get heavy, I stitched the centre of the ribbons as well for numbers 4 & 5 to support the weight. The little silver numbers are from the beading & jewellery section of my local craft store.
To add more texture to the page, I spruced up a little jellyfish with some rickrack ribbon tentacles. When leaving ends of ribbon exposed, be sure to melt the ends with a lighter to keep it from fraying. You’ll see below that my stitches look a little bit messy at the bottom of the jellyfish. This is because I wanted to make sure I stitched all of the ribbons securely to keep little hands from pulling them off.
Next up is a cute little oyster. This guy was fun to make. I found an oyster shape online and used it to cut out my felt. The shape was one half of the oyster shell. I folded my felt in half, stapled the shape to the felt and cut it out. This ensures that the top & bottom line up. I did this with both the outer brown felt and the inner pink felt. I added a little pearl inside that was stitched with about 6 passes through it to ensure it stays well affixed.
To assemble the oyster shell, you will need to first sew the top half of the shell before attaching it to the page. Once you’re ready to place it on the page, you will stitch the bottom halves together. I chose to attach the pearl once it was sewn to the page to use lots of thread to secure it.
Now it’s time to attach some buttons! I have a large stash of buttons as I find so many uses for them. I pulled out a bunch in brown tones and added a few blue and white/cream ones for some colour. You can see that they have a number of stitches in them for added security.
And there you have a fun page with all sorts of little activities and areas for your toddler to touch and explore. An under the sea theme is a must as kids just seem to love fish!
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