Over the weekend, we gathered together with my son, daughter-in-law and extremely cute granddaughter up in Pinetop, AZ, and that is why I had to finish my Big Project last week — so I could give it to her. It was a quiet book.
I got the pattern for free from a website called Modest Maven. You can see the original I worked from HERE. And you can download your own pattern and instructions there, as well. Or other things: she sews a lot of stuff for her friends and family all the time.
The book has twelve pages of different activities, several of which I’ve pictured below from the book I made. The last picture was a substitute for Maven’s telephone because I thought the old-style landline telephone, with its hand receiver connected by a coiled wire to its base and rotary number dial would be something unidentifiable to today’s kids as a phone. Furthermore, I could think of no way to represent the modern-day cell phone with its number pads, or worse just the screen, in any way that would work in a quiet book. So I substituted an apple tree with hooks…
Anyway, here’s a look at a few pages:
use the velcro-attached balloons to match the colors
velcro-attached clothes dress the little girl and a mitt fits just right on a little hand
Felt buttoned on flowers and and a lace-up football.
A zippered tent with a little dog in it (who looks suspiciously like Quigley… but that was purely accidental. Really. ) and two children who can be put to bed or taken out as desired
the aforementioned apple tree
What a precious under-taking! And you’re right about the rotary, but the apples are a stroke of genious!
Thanks, Nona. I really worried about the apples! Will they be too hard for her to manipulate? Will she choke on the hooks? This was all AFTER I had finished and had no more time to work on it, naturally. As it turned out, she liked the apples a lot, but QUIGLEY was even more entranced. He kept trying to steal them… I have no idea why. Other than that he is a very weird… er… unique dog!
Love this! I made something similar years and year ago for my kids when they were little – a “quiet” book for church. Wonder what ever happened to it.
I made a different one for my son when he was small, too, which is what gave me the idea. I couldn’t find any patterns for one like his (we still have it… I plan to refurbish it and see if he wants it) so decided to make patterns from it myself. Then I came upon the Modern Maven site and figured hey, there’s a pattern here, it’s cute, there are actually more pages of activities in this one than the old one, and if I wait to make a pattern for the old book, why… she’ll probably be in college by the time I’m done!