Quiet Book ::Pie/Garden

Pie Page

Both girl quiet books got a lattice pie page.

It's fun to weave the strips for your pie.  The tutorial is pretty quick and easy for this one.

Garden Page

Instead of pie, my son has a garden page.  (He does like playing with his sister's pie page though!) We plant a pretty big garden every year and he loves to help plant and hoe and pick and harvest.  It's a big part of our summertime.  I made sure to include root veggies that we actually plant--carrots, onions, and potatoes. We are not beet or radish fans over here. We tried rutabagas once.  But they never sweetened up--they tasted pretty gross! I think we are going to try parsnips this year.

Alright. Back to the quiet book.  No garden is complete without a little wagon to lug your harvest back to the house with! (I wish root vegetables were really this clean when you harvest them!)

There are lots of super cute garden tutorials out there with elaborate "soil". Some have button holes or slits for each little vegetable. But then you need a open bottom to be able to retrieve any veggies that get stuck in the dirt.   I wanted something much simpler and quicker to make.  I cut 3-2.5 inch strips out of felt and laid them all right above each other.  Then, I stitched along the bottom of each strip, then stitched all the way up and back down every 1.5-2 inches apart. (I didn't measure my spacing at all, I just started sewing!) There! Lots of little pockets to plant your veggies!

Carrots.  I followed the example I saw here for the veggies.  I slipped in a small long triangular green piece of felt into the tops, and then snipped the leaves once they were stitched together. Felt is thin and can rip apart easily once it is in a thin strip like these leaves are.  Some leaves have been pulled off, so you may want to do 2 fused layers here. Or perhaps use a different, more durable material for the leaves.  But, felt works for us.  Torn leaves look more like real veggies in nature. :)

I also did some onions (yes, those are supposed to be onions!) and potatoes.  I zig-zagged a couple irregular eyes on the potatoes to help them look a little more like potatoes and not big beans or something. 

Oh man. I just thought of something for the garden page.  A spigot with a hose! You could make a hose out of string and he could water the garden! And the spigot lever could move up and down somehow...You should do that!

And there you have it!  That's all my quiet book pages! Phew they were a lot of work! There were more pages I wanted to include, but had to stop myself and limit to just 10 pages.  I really wanted to do a hair braiding page, one with a belt to buckle, there was this one with a forklift I know my son would have LOVED, one with numbers, or a clock...too many ideas, not enough time!

In my next (and final) quiet book post I will discuss how it all goes together and how I did the cover.