Quiet Book, Pages 13 and 14

(If you’re interested, you can read more about my quiet book. Go here for the overview, here for pages 1 and 2, and here for pages 3 and 4, here for pages 5 and 6, here for pages 7 and 8, here for pages 9 and 10, and here for pages 11 and 12.)

We’ve reached the end! Thanks for indulging me while I shared this year-long project with you.

This page was kind of a freebie, nothing new was created, so I just made another fun page for my baby to play with. Of course there is some symbolism to go along with the story of the creation, but I’ll leave that for you to interpret.

I love the snake (is that bad?).

But for the record, I think the dove is great, too.

Now it’s all ready for some serious (quiet) playtime.

Looks like it was a hit.

The end.

Honestly, I wish I had shown more of the process, because that would probably been more helpful to anyone who would want to make a similar book, but I have this thing about letting people see what I’m working on before it’s done. I have a habit of doing things a little different from the norm; a lot of my projects go through this crazy-messy, what the heck is that? intermediate phase, and I’m afraid that people might just write it off as a dumb and click away. When I’m asked in person, I usually say “it’s hard to explain” and leave it at that. I can’t do that on the blog, though, because that just looks lazy. So I just don’t usually show the process before I’m finished, but I’m starting to think that maybe I should.

What do you think? Do you want to see my long-term projects in process? Thanks in advance for the input, and have a great weekend!

ps. I’m linking this up on tatertots and jello and at skip to my lou, and at sun scholars.

Felt Quiet Book, Pages 11 and 12

I put off this page as long as possible. Well, to be more specific, I put off doing the figures for as long as possible. I mean, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, in a children’s book? I was a little stumped.

In  the end I think they turned out a little silly looking, with their little portable bushes.

But it fit my purpose well enough, so I went with it, and I think they’re kind of cute, even if my husband does tease me about them.

As you can see, there isn’t much going on in this page.I wanted to leave it nice and open as a little play stage for my baby to use all the little figures on. In light of that, here are a few more animals that I wanted to add to the Garden of Eden.

You’ve got to have a lamb and a lion. A must.

The lamb’s wool is done using the Pekinese stitch. I like the effect here, and it adds some texture for my baby to enjoy.

And my daughter loves bears.

And here’s my inclusion of the reptile family.

(It’s based off a picture of a giant tortoise that we saw in the Galapagos.)

Theoretically, I could keep adding and adding and adding animals, but I had to cut myself off. I had to be able to call my project done at some point.

One of my favorite thing about my animals pieces is since they are magnetic, they can have a whole second life as fridge magnets or toys. My daughter loves sticking them up there. I was tempted to do a whole Noah’s ark this way, but I think I’ll have to leave that for another time. I’ve got a pretty good start, though.

ps. I am linking this up at skip to my lou.

Felt Quiet book, Pages 7 and 8

We’re past the halfway point for this project. You’d think I’d be tired of talking about it now, but nope, I’m not.

This set of pages is all about the plants. I tried to choose a variety of plant types, but really, I didn’t have room for all of them, so I just went with my favorites.

Each plant has a corresponding seed and a wee pocket to plant the seed in. In case you can’t tell, there is a pine tree,

an oak tree,

poppies,

and sunflowers.

I got a little more creative with the stitches on this page. For petals, stems, and leaves I used the granitos stitches, back stitch, and fern stitch.

I also used French knots for the poppy seeds, satin stitch for the acorn, and something like lattice work for the pine cone.

My original concept was to make the seeds with little magnets, but I just couldn’t reconcile myself to the thought of putting magnets into bite-sized pieces, especially after all the warnings about not swallowing these things (if you can imagine, two magnets meeting inside your body is not a good thing). Anyways, in an effort to avoid choking hazards, I attached the seeds to the pages with some braided thread. I would have used some other attachment method, but nothing else came to mind, and I didn’t have any thin green ribbon, so this was how it had to be.

Also, another thing that made it a little more complicated was that because I was embroidering on the flap, I had to make it a double thickness. I decided to add a magnet so that the flaps would stay opened/closed easier. I like how they blend in with the background, whether opened or closed.

Just three page sets left, and the next three are my favorites. Thanks for indulging me, and if you just can’t take another quiet book page, come back in a week and I hope to have a new project (tutorial?) to share with you.

p.s. I’m linking this up at 30 days, tatertots and jello, and skip to my lou.

Felt Quiet Book, Pages 3 and 4

(If you want to know more about my quiet book, go here for the overview and here for pages 1 and 2.)

This was probably the easiest page when it came to the actual execution, but it was also one of those pages that I had a lot of trouble conceptualizing. Water and land separating? Hmm. That was a head-scratcher.

I drew out several different ideas, but I put off starting the page for a while. And even after I had it mostly done, I wasn’t really satisfied with the results. I kept thinking of it as my lame page, and ignored it as long as possible. I am still not sure if this is the best visual representation, but I’m content with it.

The mountain shifts up and down to show mountain to valley and valley to mountain.

The stones in the water were an idea I had awhile after I had most of the page finished. At first the left page was pretty static, and I want to add a little more. They form a puzzle that builds up more land on one side, or individual islands in the water.

There are lots of different placement combinations, which makes it a little more interactive.

What do you think? Would you have done it differently? I’d love to hear your ideas!