Time for a new series! The last month or so I’ve been working feverishly on a quiet book for Little Lion. I’ll post a new page idea every week with descriptions of how I made the page. I tried to make all of my pages interactive, toddler appropriate, and educational. The first one I’m going to post is my Busy Busy Bees page. This one is a favorite. Little Lion loves to make buzzing noises as she flies the bees from flower to flower.

The entire book is made of felt. I think that in the world of pro – quiet book making you’re supposed to draw you’re template on normal paper, cut out the pieces, pin them to your material, and then cut out your material, but I just drew a rough sketch and then started cutting. I guess I’m a rebel :). After my pieces were cut out I sewed them onto the pages with my new sewing machine. Don’t look too closely at my sewing because this book is one of my first projects on the machine.

I attached some embroidery floss to the beehive “door” by tacking it on.

For my flowers I used a couple of different techniques. For the one pictured to the far right I used the same technique as I used in my post on how to make kleenex flowers. Just replace the kleenex with felt, do two on top of each other and tack it on. For the flower pictured in the middle I adjusted this tutorial. And for the one pictured to the left I used this tutorial.

For the bees I cut out yellow ovals and embroidered black lines on to them. I used fabric glue to sew on googly eyes. The wings were cut from white felt, pinched together and sewn on top of the bees to make it feel like they were flying. I attached the bees to the hive with embroidery floss and embroidered the words Busy Busy Bees onto the page. In hindsight I would use a thin ribbon instead of floss to attach the bees to the hive. My floss is always getting knotted up.

So that’s my page. It was a lot of fun to make, and I can’t wait to show you the rest of the pages I made. In the end I plan to sew button holes into the sides of the pages so they can be bound with little metal rings. If anyone else is working on quiet books I would love to see what you’re up to. Leave a link in the comments and I’ll come check it out :) Hope to see you next Monday with another quiet book page post.