Nativity

This is another copy, color cut iron page. This is from my moms 70's pattern book. There was another page with a Bible. The Bible had a zipper on the page side that opened to a pocket for the pieces. That required more work... I wanted to cut out as many steps as possible (as well as using more pellon than I needed to). I decided to just print off the stable page, then I ironed a piece of fusible pellon the size of the stable on the back side of the page where the stable was. I made another piece that was slightly larger than the stable with non fusible pellon. I pinned in on and stitched from the front around the stable. I then made a slit across (you can see the slit in the picture) so it made a pocket for the pieces. The pieces I just colored and made thicker with fusible pellon. Another classic page for me to remember my past (and much faster than if I were to have come up with the idea start to finish).

My first pages from long ago...

So, upon opening my quiet book box from long ago I found some pages that I had started to make. When my husband brought home a bunch of upholstery samples from his work, my first thought was quiet book. This was my initial idea for a layout. Looking back I realized that size was an issue. The size of the pieces were about 7x10. This was small for my bigger ideas, but it worked great for a few pages.
These ideas were from the first quiet book my mom made, a preschool type age book. I came up with the patterns myself.  I admit the snowman idea came from a neighbors quiet book I saw next to me at church, back in the day. The book was probably available at Deseret Book at the time, or something like that (maybe still is). So, in case you wanted an explanation. (and some bad pictures:)) here we go for the first pages I made for my quiet bible (as my brother calls it).


 The snowman was snapped in the original book. I thought I would make it more movable (aka. lose-able), and cut out individual pieces. I used three different sized cups to trace circles, then free handed a hat, scarf, arms, buttons, nose, and eyes. I made a little bag to hold all the pieces and wrote, "Once There Was A Snowman" in case my children couldn't make out what it was supposed to be. The blue background was a micro suede remnant that doubled as a good felt board.

Once there was a snowman with bag

leather cut out pieces of snowman from bag

I had seen a cute little tree somewhere online, and thought I would try to replicate it. I cut out the tree, trunk, 7 apple pieces, 7 orange pieces and a basket looking square.  I initially tried craft glue, then a glue gun to glue the zelcro to the tree and pieces. Those didn't last long, recently I found this amazing stuff called fusible velcro, seems to work and I didn't have to sew the leather. (the leather did get a little too much heat on some on the apples. woops.) I used craft glue to glue the tree and trunk to the fabric, now I have learned the value of wonder under, or fusible pellon. Those things sure make sewing these things easier.

Tree with apples and oranges (not biology class approved)

 I had to make the classic: tic tac toe. My older kid actually like this one. I just set a narrow zig zag, made the lines and then cut out the leather shapes and made a nifty pocket.

a used version of tic tac toe

The flower pot I cut out fabric for the pot (I should have put fusible pellon on the back or wonder under-ed it to the page). Then before I sewed the pot on I made a small zig-zag stitch for the stem and leaves. The flowers are leather with pellon fused to the back, a slit for the button.

The barn I started to make and had a few hiccups. I didn't Google much back when I was creating it, but now there are a wealth of patterns for a barn quiet book (at least it looks like it on Pinterest). I originally found a sticker page of animals, stuck them to paper, cut them out and put contact paper on them. Those pieces got lost in moves and so I made a one finger puppet to replace them, I probably will make more later.

my barn with a solitary chick

So, like I said these were, for the most part, ideas from my moms first quiet book, or the internet that I made on smaller pieces, then I sewed them onto larger pieces of pellon to match the other pages I later made.

So, what inspired me to create a blog that I swore was forbidden for my personality type? A quiet book. A quiet book? Why, you may ask. Well, because I have spent a fair amount of my life, this summer, thinking and creating one. It is now much to big for my children to go through in an hour. I thought since I have spent a fair amount of trial and error on various perspectives, I might as well document and see if someone else could get some use out of it.
And so, if you care to join me. My quiet book journey:

It all started back in the 70's when my diligent mother (for various reasons I could attempt to explain) created a quiet book for her little kids to keep them quiet in church. I know she had two books that we would look through. One was a simple fabric "preschool" type one. Braiding hair, tying shoes, buckling buckles, mailing letters among others were the activities I remember. The memories I recall from this book were pretty simple, I would flip through the pages and be done fairly quick (I must not have been preschool age when I had this memory).
The second book is what my siblings and I remember spending the most time with. My mom bought a pattern book that I was able to take a look at this last summer. If I recall the title it was titled, "My Reverent Book." It very well could have been called, "My LDS Reverent Book." ( I will obviously have to get exact words from her).
This book was quality, pellon and all. I am sure my mom spent quite a bit of time on it, and it was well worth it. And we were actually learning gospel truths or principles from it.  From this book, the pages that stick out to my siblings and I were a Keep Sammy Healthy page (word of wisdom), Jesus Loves Everyone page (finger puppets from around the world),  Latter Day Prophets (match prophets pictures to their names) and The Nativity (cut out figures to recreate the Nativity). The Keep Sammy Healthy page would engage us for hours as we stuffed food in his mouth (or threw the bad food away in the trash) and unzipped his belly to get it back out.
Well the impact was great enough that each of my older sisters have attempted to recreate a quiet book similar to it. It impacted me enough that not many months after I got married, and started thinking about the possibility of starting a family. I started stirring up ideas of a quiet book, of all things. I had recently returned from a LDS mission in a third world country. I loved it so much and I wanted my children to learn principles that I had gained while there. Preach My Gospel had come to my mission about half way through my mission and I loved it! I also had a week training in the MTC as a welfare missionary. So, my goal was to create a self reliance book for my children for when they got out on their own (okay so I thought big, I know they aren't going to learn all those things from a book, but I thought I would give it a shot).
My initial plans included packing bags for various occasions, (day outings, trips, backpack), making a schedule for the day, planning a healthy meal, budgeting, laundry, etc. Well, if you look through the pages you may not see those, it's because I still have plans to do those. I also wanted to include gospel principles like our word of wisdom Sammy page, add a tithing page and also ten commandments, etc. I spent a lot of thought and then sketched a few ideas out (I am a slow thinker). Well, I got tired of thinking and put them away in a quiet book box. I readdressed the idea shortly when my husband came home with a stack of leather samples from the furniture store he worked for, so I made a few simple pages, but then soon I had a baby and the quiet book included leather samples. I didn't have a very good plan on how the actual pages would come together.
A few years passed, then Pinterest emerged, the quiet book sparks were kindled again. After looking at hundreds of pages, I somehow stumbled upon ldsquietbooks, which is a lady that prints pages on pellon and then you finish them. There were some similar pages to my youth, so I thought this would be my easy way out. She was having a deal for a 10 page packet for $25 dollars. I got the packet. My kids wanted to help me, I let them color the numbers, and then my perfection tendencies came out, I put the packet away in a box, only slightly colored.
So, life ran at a relaxed pace this summer, and I found the packet. I thought, "how hard could it be to finish this packet?" I had a three day period, and I spent pretty much the full three days on it (and some late nights and early mornings) and pretty much finished the ten pages. And....well.... if you give a mouse a cookie....(or me and quiet book to finish.) She may want the leather pieces that were stashed away in the "quiet book" box. I thought why not pull out my leather pieces for the fabric pieces that were required. I look in the box and discovered half finished pages and  papers with plans from years before. Wheels started turning and I thought, now that I have a page size to go off of, I will simple finish the plans. Needless to say I asked for a BIG glass of milk.