Friday, December 28, 2012

Transportation Counting Quiet Book Page

For Christmas I made my nephew a car themed quiet book.  He is two and REALLY into cars right now.  I designed a transportation counting page to go into the book and thought someone out there in the great big internet might be interested in a tutorial on how to make their own.



I used the pattern, felt in blue, green, white, gray, yellow, brown, red, light blue, and dark gray.  I used one full piece of felt for the background and scraps for the rest.  The page measures 9x9.  The extra blue on the right side is to put holes for rings to make the book.  One of the things I love about felt is the ability to use every little bit for all kinds of projects!  I also used ribbon (I had blue on hand so that's what I used), these beads, and embroidery floss in white, blue, and black.

I started by stringing the beads on the ribbon and laying out the page so I could get a general sense of where everything would go.  This helped me know how long to cut the various ribbons too.
Then I stitched the yellow lines on the road and the waves on the lake.  After that I sewed down the 9x5" green ground, road, lake, and railroad tracks.  If you would rather, they could also be hot glued onto the page, just leave a space at the edges so you can sew down the ribbons and ribbon coverings cause it is practically impossible to sew through hot glue :p

After the background was finished, I machine zigzagged the ends of the ribbons to the page.  Since this was for a two-year-old, I made sure those ribbons are never coming off!






To make the page look nicer after that, I embroidered the stop sign and railroad crossing sign, tucked the end of the sign posts underneath, and stitched them over the ribbon ends.  I also stitched down the yield sign, the dock to cover the boat ribbon end, blue ribbon cover for the other side of the lake, gray ribbon cover on the end of the railroad track, and two clouds for the airplane ribbon ends.

As you can see, it's not a perfect sewing job, but once you finish you can always trim the edges of the page to make it look nicer.


That's it!  If you make this page, please send me pictures so I can see what amazing creation you make!

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