Apparently Russ has had several men ask him if I have started "nesting" yet. They told him that their wives started "nesting" (desperately cleaning their entire houses) about 2-3 days before their baby came. Well I have felt so miserable that even with the desire and drive to desperately clean my house I have not been able to do it. I instead found myself making a quiet book. Some days I would work on it for a few minutes and get bored. Other days I would have all this energy and drive to get it done and would work for HOURS. Often missing lunch and getting very sick because of it. Whole pregnancy required eating regularly. Fun. Anyway. I am now at 39 weeks and 2 days and it is officially FINISHED. YES. I made a whole quiet book. Now, I would LOVE to share patterns with you all... However, I didn't have any patterns! Except one. Which I WILL share. This was my basic process:
- Go to Michaels and buy a ton of felt and some odds and ends like big buttons, zippers, beads, puffy letters, puff paint, etc.
- Think of something that seems cool to do. Example: I remember we had a quiet book when I was a kid and I remember it having a braiding page. This braiding page was the face of a freckled girl with orangey-red yarn for hair to braid. So I was thinking a girls hair would be better than just some random ribbons or something... But since we're having a boy I kept trying to think of a way to make it more gender generic, so I thought "what if I did a Rapunzel theme instead?" Still kinda girlie of course but maybe a little cooler than Pippie Longstocking? So I moved onto step three.
- Search the internet for examples of what I'm thinking until I find something I like.
- Take the idea I found on-line and create and adapt it. This is the part that often took the longest. I would print out pictures of things from the internet or just freehand on paper. Then I would cut the paper out, place it on the felt and then cut the felt around the paper.
- Once everything is cut out you just have to do a LOT of sewing. I am not a huge fan of sewing so I put this part off until I had most of the book done, haha. But I kept misplacing pieces of the pages so I decided to bite the bullet and just sew the dang thing!
- Make a cover. We used some leftover fabric we happened to have and some batting. Voila! QUIET BOOK.
The cover... Obviously!
A zipper and counting page.
A cool old fashioned phone! The phone is just stuck on the page with velcro, he can pick it up and "talk" to people. There is also a little phone book with real phone numbers in it.
A clock to practice telling time. I stumbled upon a picture of a clock with a mouse and thought it was adorable, so OBVIOUSLY I had to add a mouse to mine as well!
Simple boring shape match. Never found anything I loved so I just did a classic!
4 seasons. I LOVED this idea. Especially since we live somewhere with no seasons... Or real trees...
Rapunzel hair braiding page! The people are little dolls to play with, and one is a prince! Makes it more boy friendly right? :)
Gumball machine color matching with giant buttons. Thought it would be a more fun way to practice color matching!
Farm! This is the one and only page I had a pattern for. I obviously tweeked quite a few things, but the pattern saved SO MUCH TIME. And the funny thing? A friend of mine made the pattern... And I ACCIDENTALLY found it when I did a search! Love the animal finger puppets!
A weaving page that is a pie. I thought that would be more fun than just some random pieces of fabric to weave!
And last but not least I thought it would be fun to have a dress up page. To make it more boy friendly I made a bunch of outfits for professions. I have a doctor, cop, construction worker, fireman, and chef! Most of them have hats too.
Anyway, overall I enjoyed making my book even if it turned out a bit not great. Haha. The kid won't care. And he won't care how much TIME and EFFORT it took his mother to make this for him! So I shouldn't worry too much about how it turned out. :)
