Quiet Book

I finally finished (stopped) Maggie's quiet book. It's almost entirely felt. I love felt. I bound it by sewing button holes on the side of each page and tying it together with yarn. That way I can easily add more pages when I get around to it. I only have five pages done so far. Click on any images to view them larger.

Gumball page: color matching. Each little circle is velcro-ed on. Maggie can do this one herself and loves to pretend to get the colors wrong. I pretty much copied this exactly from Crafty Chic.
The idea for the Seasons page came from Sew Can Do. Maggie is obsessed with the seasons, so this was perfect for her. My Spring umbrella turned out ugly, so I did Easter eggs instead. I embroidered the name of the season on each section using my trusty darning foot.
Some of the pieces snap off. Maggie likes to take them all off so I can put them on again for her. I used sew-on snaps.
The main thing I looked at while making the button-on flower page was an etsy listing that isn't up any more. The flowers are the only thing in her book made from fabric. I topstitched two layers wrong-sides together and sewed button holes in the middle of each. This was my first attempt at button holes.
Maggie can't do this one at all yet, but she'll learn.
Another one of Maggie's obsessions: "cuckoo clocks." To make the hands, I sewed two layers of felt together, then added button holes. I sewed the button on loosely so I could put the hands on (they're pretty thick) and they would still turn. I am thinking of adding some words (anything but "Time for Church!") but I haven't decided what.
This is the page for Maggie to do her felt puzzles on. I got the idea for the felt puzzles from Crafty Chic, but I didn't copy her puzzles and I'm glad I didn't: the puzzles are a LOT harder than you'd think! I don't have anything to keep the puzzle pieces in. I couldn't decide how to do it, so we're going to just use a baggie for now.
These are the first puzzles I made, months ago. The dinosaur one is really hard to do. Here is my most recent puzzle, the fish. I thought about it a lot before I did it, and here are some felt puzzle tips:

• Fill as much of the square as you can. White space makes it difficult to figure out where the piece goes. This is the dinosaur's problem. That's why I added the bubbles and seaweed to the fish puzzle. Also, the seaweed anchors the puzzle and it's easy to tell Maggie that it goes on the bottom.
• Sew everything down before cutting the puzzle up. Then stitch again around any open edges.
• Use a rotary cutter, if you have one. This should have occurred to me much sooner than it did.
• Don't make a 7" square puzzle. Seriously. Just make it 6 inches and you can easily cut it into 2" squares. This is the "beep beep"'s problem.

Here are some more homemade quiet books I looked at for ideas while making this. A lot of these are for very young children so I didn't use them. I wanted something very interactive for Maggie.
ABC quiet book
How to make a quiet book - very detailed instructions and some great ideas.
Homemade by Jill
Naptime Journal