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Anticipated craft time: 4-5 hours
This busy book is recommended for children ages 3-5.
• Warning- This book contains small parts that may present a choking hazard for children under the age of 3.
The “My Car Book” includes instructions to make the following pages:
• A front cover for the book
• A “Button The Wheels On The Truck” page, with two button on wheels and movable clouds on a string.
• A “Snap On The Traffic Lights” page, with 3 snap on colored circles for traffic lights.
• A “Drive The Cars On The Road” page, with a three moveable car pieces and a storage pocket “Parking Lot”.
• A “Match Up The Road Signs” page, with 4 Velcro road signs.
• A “Build The Car Puzzle” page, with 5 Velcro on car puzzle pieces.
Supplies Needed:
• Printed fabric for the pages and pieces (Available for purchase through Spoonflower, I would recommend the cotton canvas fabric for best durability)
• Iron on fixative lining (big enough for the movable pieces)
• Felt (big enough for the movable pieces)
• Elastic
• 2 Large matching buttons (for truck wheels)
• Thin blue Ribbon (for truck page)
• 3 Sewable Snaps
• 2 Small Rings
• Velcro
• A Sewing Machine (Can also be hand sewn)
• A Needle
• Thread
• Sewing Pins
• Scissors
• An Iron
• An Ironing Board or Ironing Surface
• 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 the fabric 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 quiet book and make sure you DO NOT CUT OUT the individual pieces.
Take your iron on fixative lining and your felt and follow the fixative instructions for attaching the smaller movable pieces to the felt.
Start by taking the fabric with the smaller quiet book pieces and cut the iron on fixative lining and the felt to match the size and shape of the fabric.
Next layer the fabric with the felt on the bottom, the iron on fixative in the middle and the printed fabric on top with the printed side facing out.
(You may want a disposable cloth, or bit a excess fabric for this 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 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.
Step Four:
After sewing around each of the traffic signs take a piece of velcro and cut strips of it sized for each of the extra fabric traffic signs. Sew the rough patch of velcro to the back of each sign.
Step Five:
Find the quiet book page titled “Match Up The Road Signs” and sew the soft part of the velcro to the middle of each sign.
Step Six:
Find the pieces that make up the blue “Car Puzzle” and again cut out a strip of velcro for each piece of the puzzle. Sew the rough part of the velcro onto the back of each piece.
Step Seven:
Find the page titled “Build The Car Puzzle” and sew the soft part of the velcro to each of the corresponding puzzle piece sections in the same spot you sewed the velcro to the removable pieces.
Step Eight:
Separate your snaps, and hand sew one side of the backing onto each of the different circles representing the colored traffic lights. (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 Nine:
Take the page with the title “Snap On The Traffic Lights”. Hand sew the other side of the snaps used in step eight to the inside of each of the traffic light circles. (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 Ten:
Set your sewing machine to sew a buttonhole, and take the page with the extra quiet book pieces. Sew a buttonhole in the middle of each of the “Monster Truck” wheels.
On the “Button The Wheels On The Truck Page” sew the two large matching buttons onto the center of each of the trucks wheels.
Next cut out the cloud piece from your extra piece fabric (you can cut our the rest of the pieces as well at this point). Take the cloud piece and sew the two rings onto the back of it toward the left and right sides.
Take a thin piece of ribbon and cut a piece long enough to go horizontally across the truck page, with an extra inch hanging off. Fold the end of the ribbon a ¼ inch under and sew it so the ribbon won’t fray.
Then sew that end of the ribbon in the seam of the truck/car page (so that when the book is finished the ribbon will go across the top of the truck page, but not be on the car page). The ribbon should be toward the top of the page so it lays across the sun and clouds in the sky.
Next slide the rings of your cloud over the ribbon so that the rings are hidden and only the cloud is visible.
Pin the far end of the ribbon to the end of the page and leave any overhanging ribbon there. It will be sewn into the page and secured when the book’s pages are sewn together.
Step Eleven:
Find the page titled “Drive The Cars On The Road”. Take the extra piece that looks like a parking lot and pin it so it lines up with the parking lot on the page. Sew around the top, right and bottom of the parking lot, sewing it into place on the page and creating a pocket for storing the “driving” cars.
Step Twelve: (Optional)
Take the front cover of the book and sew a button onto the right side of the page in the center (for buttoning the book closed)
On the opposite side of the page pin a 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 Thirteen:
Take the front cover of the book, and lay it face up, then take the page with the button on truck wheels, and the car puzzle and lay it face down over the top page, so the printed side of each page is touching.
Pin in place.
Make sure your elastic loop is facing in against the printed pages and only the edges of it are at the seam.
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 Fourteen:
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 Fifteen:
Use the four inch gap you left and 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.
Iron your page flat. Be careful not to iron over the velcro parts as they may melt.
Step Sixteen:
Fold up the edges of your four inch gap, and pin them in place. Then sew around the outside of your book page (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 Seventeen:
Repeat steps Thirteen through Sixteen for the other two pages of your quiet book.
Step Eighteen:
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. Create the binding by sewing a vertical line down the middle of your overlapped pages, securing the pages of the book together.
Step Nineteen:
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.
