How to Make a Quiet Book

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been making my son a quiet book to keep him busy at church. I have been dedicating as much time as possible to it - mainly so I could put my house back together. I have had fabric, thread, pins, etc. scattered throughout my house while I've been working on it. My husband's desk was turned into my sewing station. Let's just say he is extremely glad to have his desk back! He was very patient with me.

How to print the patterns:
I have put pictures of my book below along with the patterns I created. I just free handed most of the patterns (and I am not an artist) so they are not perfect by any means. However, they will be a huge time saver to you when putting your book together. A large majority of my time was spent making and cutting patterns. To print the patterns, save the pattern images to your computer and then open the picture in Microsoft Office Picture Manager and print them as full size photos with the 8.5" x 11" paper size selected.

Other Quiet Book Sites
I used this site and my sister-in-law as my main sources of inspiration for the book. I loved the How to Make a Quiet Book blog, which has links to other quiet books. I got all of my book dimensions from the site. There were so many ideas for quiet book pages, but these are my favorites. Down the road as our family grows I probably will split this book and make a few more pages so I can have two books.
Basic supplies needed for your quiet book:
1/2 yard denim fabric for the cover of book (cut two 26" x 13" pieces)
Ribbon to sew onto cover of book
2 - 2 1/2 yards Muslin (depending on how many pages you make - I cut mine 10.5" x 12")
Felt in all colors (I bought the pre-cut squares)
Thread in basic colors
Sew-on snaps
Velcro (I used iron-on)
Three binder rings (I used 2" - bought at Staples)
Eyelets and Eylet plier kit

The rest of the supplies depend on what pages you create. On each page below, I will describe what I used.

Making your pages:
Each of the stoplight colors velcro on and off. Velcro and felt are the only supplies needed. Note: I accidentally flipped the page and sewed the stoplight on upside down. The green light should be on the bottom. I haven't had a change to unpick the page and correct it.
The apples snap on and off the tree and can be put in the brown bucket. The pages requires felt and sew-on snaps. The large snaps you can put on with the pliers kit are extremely difficult for kids to pull on and off. Don't use those.

The laundry page requires felt, string, eyelets, and close pins. They do sell smaller close pins than these, but I was worried about my son swallowing them so I went with a medium size.
The flower pot requires felt, ribbon, and buttons.

The rainbow page uses felt, string, and small rings. I found the rings in the craft jewelry section. Each rainbow color has a matching piece of string that can be threaded through the rings.
The telephone requires felt, a marker, and a no-tie shoestring.

The weave pattern just requires felt.
I bought a purse at the dollar store and sewed it onto the page. I then filled it with items from a purse, such a play credit cards, money, chapstick, pen, etc.

The piggy bank requires felt, a button, and fake money.
The fishing page requires felt, magnets, a dowel, and a string. My dowels were never unpacked from the last move, so I need to search for them in the garage so I can finish my fishing pole. Put magnets on the back of the fish, seaweed, boot, octopus and on the end of the sting of the fishing pole.

Noah's Ark requires felt, a zipper, and animals to put inside the ark. I used these finger puppets from IKEA that my son got for Christmas.
These pages allow the child to write a letter and put it in the mailbox. Felt, a pencil, and a small notebook are required for these pages.
This page allows the child to dress the person using items from inside the closet on the page on the right. Felt, velcro, and a zipper are required for these pages.
The shape page on the left teaches shapes, matching, and colors. The shapes velcro on and off and can be put inside the brown pocket on the bottom of the page. Felt and velcro are required.

The fruit basket on the right just requires felt.
These pages allow the kids to create faces with different combination of facial features, sort of like a Mr. Potato Head. The page on the right holds the different options for the face on the left. This page requires, felt, velcro, yarn, and fake fur. The fur is extremely messy, so I may suggest making all the hair pieces from yarn or just using felt.
For the temple page, you will need felt and sew-on snaps. The sun and each piece of the temple snaps on and off.
Other page ideas: City/Town with cars and houses that snap on and off, barn with farm animal puppets inside, veggie garden with veggies that button on and off, tree with fall leaves that attach on and off, counting/match page, kite with ribbons that tie on and off, shoe that you can tie, oven mit that you can put hand into, Indian tepee that zips, page with several buckles to fasten

Quiet books are a lot of fun to create. I am not a seamstress by any means, so if I can do it, you can too! It does take a lot of time and effort but it is a fun project. If this isn't your thing but you'd like a quiet book, check out my previous post for places to buy your own quiet book. I'd love to see pictures if you make a book, so send them to me when you finish!