There are some ladies in my ward (congregation) who are making quiet books, so this one is a quiet book cover for them. Here's an example of a cover I've done:
If you're up to the challenge, keep reading!
Materials:
- 13 inches of cotton print fabric. If you are ambitious, you can piece your own fabric together to make a cute, pieced-quilt look, but we will not cover that in today's blog.
- Matching thread
- 36 inches matching ribbon
- Quilt batting, such as warm & natural or Pellon (I have always used Warm & Natural, but in this tutorial, we used some sold by Pellon (in the interfacing section by the cutting tables) and it worked great. You need two 9" by 11" rectangles of this stuff--not much!
2. Cut four 10" by 12" rectangles of fabric. If you cut every ten inches, you will be able to fit four along your strip of fabric.
So you cut every ten inches here . .
And then cut at twelve inches here.
3. Next, take two pieces of fabric and put them right sides together. Now comes the tricky part (especially tricky because I don't have great pictures of this. Sorry!) Take your ribbon and cut it into two 18" pieces. Lay your ribbon across your quiet book, between your two layers of fabric, with one end of the ribbon just poking out of one side and the other end curled up inside between the two layers. I like to put my ribbon about 1/3 of the way down the page, and this also conveniently avoids any complications with the hole you will later punch through your quiet book, but you can put the ribbon smack halfway down the page (as shown in these photos) if you want to.
Now you are going to sew around the edge of the fabric, using a 1/2" seam allowance. Backstitch at the beginning and end, leaving a gap in one of the longer sides of about 2.5 inches. Do the same with your other two pieces of fabric.
Here is what it should look like when you finish sewing. Note the little ribbon sticking out of the right side and the other end of the ribbon sticking through the gap.
4. Trim the corners on the diagonal, as shown. You want to get close to your stitching, but don't cut into the stitch. This is going to make your finished corners lay much nicer when you pop everything right-side out.
5. Lay your batting on top of your fabric.
6. Next, you are going to squeeze everything through your little gap and pop it all right-side out. You can reach into the gap to smooth out your batting inside.
You can also reach inside with a scissors and use the tip of the scissors to push the corners out so you get them nice and pointy. A small scissors works best.
7. Now iron everything down. Make sure when you iron that you've pushed the fabric all the way out to the seams; not sure if that makes sense, but maybe it will when you try ironing? In the spot where you have your gap, you will just try to make the edges as even as possible. Pin the edges where the gap is into place before you start the next step.
8. Next, you want to pull your ribbon across the front of your quiet book cover and pin it in place at the other edge, then sew across the page on the ribbon. This will make sure your ribbon holds strong during the many times your book gets tied and untied.
In case you forgot how to sew, here is a photo of sewing the ribbon on. It's easier to aim if you center your needle in the middle of the presser foot.
9. Get excited, because you are nearly finished!!
10. Finish your quiet book cover by topstitching around the edge of the cover, using a 1/4" seam allowance. Again, if you're ambitious, you could sew some fun patterns onto the cover to give it a cute, quilted look, but it's not necessary.
And now you have a lovely quiet book cover to go with your quiet book!
PS--You will use the same technique to sew the pages in your quiet book together. Before you sew the pages, just take off all of the removable parts and use pins to pin anything down that might get in the way. Then sew around your pages, leaving a 1/2" seam allowance and a gap on the side. Trim the corners, pop the pages right side out, and topstitch with a 1/4" seam allowance.
Next, you will want to do will be to put reinforced holes along the edges of your quiet book pages. You can do this by purchasing a little metal eyelet kit and punching eyelets in your page. Or, another alternative is to sew the eyelets in if your sewing machine has an eyelet function. OR you could sew small button holes into your pages. To figure out where to put the holes, I just used a sheet of paper punched with a three-hole punch as a template.
You can buy the little rings that hold your book together at an office supplies store. I could never find them in packages smaller than 15, so you might want to share with a friend, since you really only need three.
That's it. Now go and enjoy your quiet books (or at least enjoy watching your kids enjoy them)!
No comments:
Post a Comment