Hobby Lobby

My favorite place to buy felt is Hobby Lobby.  I've never actually been to the store because it's prohibitively far from me, but their online site is very easy to use and navigate.  Just look at the variety of felt they have!  This is my stash of felt I currently have.  I was cleaning my room and decided to show you :)

Craft felt is so inexpensive and versatile.  It is my very favorite craft supply to have on hand for things.  While quiet books are my biggest use of felt, I also have made beanie babies, decorated t-shirts, and made felt food.

Father's Day Idea

I saw this awesome idea on Pinterest that I thought was just perfect for my father-in-law.  My boys call him PopPop.  He is diabetic so I tailored the items going into the cans to be sugar free/low carb.

 before

& after

Quiet Book Patterns

Copycrafts is an etsy shop that is run by John & Jennifer.  I came across their patterns on etsy and it was the first quiet book I had ever attempted.  I made the Under the Sea book and the To the Zoo book.  Both are adorable and my two (at the time) toddlers loved them.
I would recommend their books for younger children simply because there is not as many "moving parts" to their books that would keep an older child entertained.  For kids less than three years old, these books are perfect to stick in a diaper bag to take to the doctor's office, in the car, and anywhere you need a little one to  sit quietly.

I am working on several new quiet book pages that I hope to blog about in the next few days.  Hit a small snag last night - my computer totally died on me :(  Thankfully, I have it totally backed up so life goes on!

Update: here are some links to some of the quiet book patterns that I have designed and offer to you for free!
5 Green & Speckled Frog Page
Frog Life Cycle Page
Alien and Spaceship Page
5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed Page
Transportation Themed Counting Page
Mail Truck Page
Wheels on the Bus Page

Frog Life Cycle Felt Page

To go with my frog song page and to be more educational I designed and made the life cycle of a frog.  The little frog/tadpole is called a metamorph.  Did you know that?  I think that is a super cool name - metamorph.  Kind of sounds like an X-men or something :)

I used blue, 2 colors of green, 2 colors of light green, brown, and tan felt.  I also used black, green, and blue embroidery thread, white sequins, & sew on googly eyes.  I really like all the textures on this page.  For the background I used blue felt and machine stitched a horizon line about 3 inches from the top.  I then lined up the lily pad and sewed it down.  I embroidered green vine lines down from the lily pad and added leaves.  Then I arranged the sequins and attached them with a black french knot to resemble frog eggs.

The tadpole is only stitched around the brown part.  I sandwiched the tan tail beneath the brown while I was sewing but did not stitch the edges of it so it has some movement.  I did the same for the metamorph, sandwiching the tail and arms and legs beneath the body while I stitched it.  I then stitched around the arms and legs.

I did the cattails next by stitching down the grass and then adding black embroidery for the stalks.  I stitched down the flowers (did you know the brown cyclinder part is a flower?) and added blue embroidery for the water.

Then I stitched down the frog's body and added his legs and arms.  Finally, I sewed on all the eyes.  I finished the back of the page like I did the 5 green and speckled frogs page with frog themed material on the back and topstitching around.  In retrospect, I should have positioned the page elements further in towards the middle so I had more space around the outside.  I'll have to remember that for future pages - leave bigger page margins!

If you are interested in making the page, please email me and I will send you the pattern.  Update - Here is the pattern.

Five Green & Speckled Frogs Quiet Book Page

I love felt quiet books.  They are such fun for little hands and they make such personal and great gifts!
This is the first page I have ever designed on my own.  My kids love the song Five Green and Speckled Frogs
so I wanted to make a page on which they could move the frogs while they sang the song.

I used black, brown, light blue, blue, light green, green, and white felt for this page.  I also used black & blue embroidery thread, blue ribbon, and frog themed material to back the page.  The page is 9x9.  I find this is the best size for me cause it fits nicely in small hands.

First I embroidered waves on the blue pond shape and zig zagged the top edge of the pond and set it aside.  If you are worried about stretching you could use stiffened felt instead.  Next, I sewed random wavy lines and knots onto the log shape to make it look like wood grain.  Then I positioned and sewed the log to the page.  Then I put together the frogs.  I first attached the eyes to the frog body with french knots and then used the same black embroidery thread to attach the frog belly and make the mouth.  After that I sandwiched the arms and legs between the frog top and bottom body and sewed around the edge, leaving a space at the top and bottom for the ribbon.  I used a safety pin attached to the ribbon to thread the ribbon through the frog openings.  Don't forget to measure the ribbon to the length that will fit from about an inch over the top of the page to a length that will be covered by the pond.

I sewed down all the bottom edges of the ribbon and pinned the top edges.  Then I sewed the pond pocket on.  I positioned and sew down the middle of all the black "flies".  They kind of looked more like butterflies to me but all well.  I put the right sides of the felt page and frog themed material together and starting on the side of the page sewed around the outside, leaving a section open to turn it right side out.  I sewed a couple of times across the ribbon top edges since I have boys that will pull on the ribbon.  Then, after I turned the page right side out I topstitched around the edge, making sure to close up the hole I used to turn the page right side out.  This gave it a nice finished look.

If you are at all interested in the pattern, please email me and I will email it to you.
Update: HERE IS THE PATTERN :)