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Click here to purchase this fabric through Spoonflower (I would suggest using the cotton canvas fabric for the best durability)
This quiet book is recommended for children ages 4-8.
Anticipated crafting time for this project: 4-5 Hours
Warning – This book contains small parts that may present a choking hazard for children under the age of 3.
The “My Farm Book” includes instructions to make the following pages:
• A front cover for the book
• An “Add Wheels To The Tractor” page, with a button on wheel and a snap on wheel.
• A “Help Plant or Pick Crops” page, with small pockets and 8 pull up and out vegetables.
• A “Play With The Farm Animals” page, with a fence “pocket” and three finger puppet animals.
• A barn page, with peek-a-boo barn door flaps.
• A “Help Braid My Tail” page, with a horse with strands of lacing to braid or play with.
• A “Help Pick The Apples” page, with four hook and eyelet apples and a basket “pocket” to hold them.
You will need the following supplies:
• Printed fabric for the pages and pieces needed for the book (Available for purchase through Spoonflower, I would suggest using the cotton canvas fabric for the best durability)
• Iron on fixative lining (for the smaller play pieces)
• Felt Lining (for the smaller play pieces)
• Cording or yarn (For the horses mane and tail)
• Elastic (if you want the book to button closed)
• Two Buttons (On for the large tractor wheel the other for the front cover of the book)
• 4 Hook and Eyelet Pairs (for the apples)
• 1 Sewable Snap (for the smaller tractor wheel)
• A Sewing Machine (Can also be hand sewn)
• A Needle
• Thread
• Sewing Pins
• Scissors
• Seam Ripper
• An Iron
• An Ironing Board or Ironing Surface
• A Candle
• Matches (to light the candle)
• Note – A few minor design updates may have been made to the fabric & movable pieces for better usability.
Step One:
Iron the printed fabric. Then take it and cut out the 4 large rectangular pages of the book, each section should have two pages still attached in the middle, and when they are cut out they should look like the image to the right.
Put pages aside.
Step Two:
Take the leftover fabric with the various smaller pieces for the busy book and make sure you DO NOT CUT OUT the individual pieces.
Follow the instructions on the iron on fixative lining to connect the smaller play pieces to the felt fabric for stronger durability.
Start by taking the fabric with the smaller busy book pieces and cut the iron on fixative lining and the felt to match the size and shape of the fabric.
Next layer the three pieces of fabric. Felt should be on the bottom, iron on fixative should be in the middle, printed fabric should be on the top with printed side out (not facing the iron on fixative) You may want a disposable cloth, or bit a excess fabric for the next part as any over hang of the iron on fixative will be sticky and will gunk up your iron or ironing board if they touch.
Set your iron to a medium setting and press it to the printed fabric holding for three seconds before removing and pressing the next section. Continue until the whole cloth has been ironed. Then flip your cloth over so the printed side is down, and the felt side is up and repeat the process (again you may want to use a cloth on this part to save your fabric and your iron if you have any overhang).
Step Three:
Take the fabric with the various quiet book pieces to your sewing machine and sew around each individual piece, keeping your thread just barely inside the line of the design.
Special Note: For the finger puppets you only need to sew across the bottom section of them right now as you’ll sew around them to keep the layers in place when you attach the front and backs together.
Step Four:
Cut out all the pieces of fabric you have just sewn around.
Step Five:
Separate your sew-able snap, and hand sew one side of the backing on the smaller tractor wheel. (Note: Make sure you sew the correct or snappable side of the snap facing out – test with the other half of the snap to see if they fit together if you are unsure which side is correct).
Step Six:
Set your sewing machine to sew a buttonhole, and find the larger tractor wheel. Sew a buttonhole in the middle of it using the button you have chosen for your tractor wheel as guide.
Step Seven:
Find the page titled “Add Wheels to the Tractor”. Sew your button in the middle of the bigger wheel on the page, and the back side of the snap on the smaller tractor wheel. (Note: Make sure you sew the correct or snappable side of the snap facing out – test with the other half of the snap to see if they fit together if you are unsure which side is correct).
Step Eight:
Take your hook and eyelets. Hand sew the eyelet part onto the back of each of the apple pieces. (opposite of what is shown in the pictures, this will make it easier for the apples to slide into the basket.)
Step Nine:
Take your hook pieces and hand sew them were you would like them in the tree on the page titled “Help Pick The Apples.” Make sure you leave at least an 1 ½ margin on the top and right side of the page for a seam when sewing the book pages together.
Step Ten:
Find the extra quiet book piece that matches the apple basket on the “Help Pick The Apples” page. Pin it in place and sew the left, bottom and right side of the basket in place, leaving the top open and creating a pocket for the “picked” apples to be placed in.
Step Eleven:
Take your cording or yarn and cut it into 7 inch long strands to create the horse’s tail, take a handful of those strands (for the horse’s mane) and cut them in half so that they are 3 ½ inches long.
Step Twelve:
Light your candle, then take each of the cut strips from step eleven and move the ends of them towards the flame (without actually touching the strands to the flame) just get close enough to melt the fiber at the end to prevent fraying. Repeat on both sides of the strand with each of the strands.
Step Thirteen:
Take your finished 7 inch strands from step twelve and lay them out so the middle of each strand is over the rump of the horse on the page titled “Help Braid My Tail.”
Then sew a line across the strands anchoring them in place, before folding the top strands up.
Step Fourteen:
Take your finished 3 ½ inch strands from step twelve and lay them out over the horses head, arranging them so that they create a flowing mane for the horse. Sew a line along the side of the horse’s head to anchor them into place.
Lay the cutout horse over the strands and align it with the horse on the page, then carefully sew around the horse and over all the strands sewing them into place.
Optional Step: If you want your tail and mane hairs wrapping around the horse, bend them down and sew across the strands of the horse’s body to get them to lay flat and in place where you would like them to be.
Step Fifteen:
Take your square of cut out dirt and sew a line across the top and bottom of each of the faint brown lines on the page. You should have six lines sewn when finished. Next take your seam ripper or a pair of scissors and cut through the middle of each of those faint brown lines, creating small pockets for the vegetables to fit in.
Next take the book page titled “Help Plant or Pick Crops” and pin the brown square into place on the page. Sew two lines across the middle of the page, the first sew right above the second faint brown line, the second sew right above the third faint brown line where the fingers are pointing to in the picture. This will make it so the vegetables don’t slide down too low in the pocket when being put into the holes.
Step Sixteen:
Take the two cut out red doors and line them up on the page showing the barn so that they cover the wood and hay inside the barn. Sew a strip on the left side of the left door anchoring it to the page and a strip on the right side of the right door anchoring it to the page so that you have two peek-a-boo doors that can open and show the inside of the barn.
Step Seventeen:
Find all the finger puppet pieces. Pair the front sides and back sides together and sew around the left, top, and right sides of them, leaving your previous stitch to hold the bottoms and allow for little fingers to fit inside.
Step Eighteen:
Take your fence cutout and line it up on the page titled “Play With The Farm Animals.” Pin it into place and sew along the left, bottom and right of the fence creating a pocket for the finger puppet animals to slide into.
Step Nineteen: (Optional)
Take the front cover of the book and sew a button onto the right side of the page in the middle.
On the opposite side of the page (the back cover of the book) pin the small loop of elastic with the loop facing the print on the page and the edges of the elastic pinned at the edge of the page.
Step Twenty:
Take the front cover of the book, and lay it face up, then take the page with the tractor and the apple tree and lay it face down over the top page, so the printed side of each page is touching. (Make sure the apples and tractor wheels have been taken off and put aside for this part.)
Make sure your elastic loop is facing in against the printed pages and only the edges of it are at the seam.
Pin in place.
Starting at the bottom middle sew around the outside of the two pages, about a ⅜ inch from the edge, leave about a four inch gap in the bottom of the book from where you began your sewing to where you end it.
Step Twenty-One:
Clip off the extra fabric in the corners of your book (This will allow it to lay more flat when you flip the book).
Step Twenty-Three: Using the four inch gap you left in step twenty-one flip the page, so that the print side is out, taking special care to press out the corners of the page as much as possible.
Step Twenty-Two:
Iron your page. Fold up the edges of your four inch gap, and pin them in place. Then sew around the outside of your book (about ¼ inch from the edge) Start and end your sewing in the same place so that your four inch gap is sealed shut.
Step Twenty-Three:
Repeat steps these steps for your other two book pages. If your horse’s mane or tail hair is longer than the page make sure you tuck it up into the book before you sew around your page so it doesn’t get sewn into the seam.
Step Twenty-Four:
Line up the two sewn rectangular pages (that create the whole of your quiet book) and pin them in place so they completely overlap one another. Sew a straight line down the middle of your overlapped pages, creating the binding and securing the pages of the book together.
Step Twenty-Five:
Add all of your quiet book pieces to the book and congratulations, you are done! 🙂
Thank you so much for your purchase of this quiet book kit, if you found any of these instructions to be unclear or difficult please email me at [email protected] I’d love to get them updated and clarified to the best of my ability.
Spot cleaning with a light detergent and a damp rag is the best way to clean your quiet book, but it should also hold up if you remove all the excess pieces from it and wash it in the washing machine on a gentle cycle. Air dry only.
Please let me know if you have any comments or additional questions.
