Sep 16, 2011

Forest Quiet Book Page

Stephanie Crafts, Quiet Book, Sewing 14 Quiet Book, Sewing

Here’s the next quiet book page for Jax’s book! I knew I wanted to do a tree and owl page, but it wasn’t going to be the next one I made. When Amazon happened to suggest this Skip Hop Treetop Friends Soft Activity Book, I was inspired! The tree and leaf style is based on that book. The owl is made from a free pattern found on Juicy Bits. I shrunk the pattern a little so I’d have an owl just under 2″ wide and 3″ high (I shrunk the page from 8.5″ wide to 7″ wide before printing), and I attached a 8″ ribbon into the bottom instead of making an ornament loop.

The page features a stuffed owl who lives in the tree trunk pocket. He is attached by ribbon so he doesn’t get lost. In the tree under a flap, lives a little bluebird in a nest.

This page was 100% hand-sewn. You could use a sewing machine. It is easier for me to hand-sew while watching and playing with Jax. I also didn’t want to buy spools of thread in all those colors. I already had matching embroidery floss. Here is my material list: a 9″ square of light blue felt, felt in lime green, green, light brown, dark brown, orange, red, yellow,aqua, purple and white, batting/stuffing and green ribbon. (The owl was done in felt: olive, natural, purple and aqua. His feathers are light aqua ric-rac. I used googly eyes instead of felt for the eyes.)

     

I started with a light blue 9″ square. If your page is a different size, you’ll need to adjust the lime treetop and the green grass – both go to the edges of the page. I stitched down the grass and the treetop first. Then I layered the tree trunk over the dark brown (stitching the other end of the owl’s ribbon down) and stitched all around the whole trunk. For the hole, I only stitched down the upper 1/3.

     

I sewed down the toadstool stems next. The polka dots were stitched onto the caps, then the caps sewn down with some batting for dimension. The little bird’s wing was only sewn on where it attaches to his body. His eye is a French knot and his beak was satin stitched. I sewed down the nest with helter skelter straight stitches then sewed the bird into his new home.

The leaves were all attached by doing a running stitch down the center for about 1/3 – 1/2 of the length so they stick off the page a bit. On the tree flap, I sewed the two leaves to the front piece, then sewed front to back with a loop of ribbon. The final step was to sew the flap on. I didn’t sew around the edges of the page because it will be machine-sewn to the fabric book page eventually.

For more free quiet book patterns, go here! If you use this pattern, please add a comment or link to me. I really would love to see your version!