In Depth Guide to Joining Quiet Book Pages – Part One of Three
Essentially, I will be joining the quiet book page by taking two sheets of fabric (muslin and, optionally, attach it to fusible fabric), decorating them, sewing them together, flipping them right side out, closing the opening, and adding grommets so they can go into your quiet book cover. To go more in-depth on how I did this I will present the information to you in three separate parts. This post will show you the overall plan, go over the required materials, and prepare both sides of the page. The next post in the series will go over how you can go from two of your prepared pages to having a finished quiet book page. The final post will go over attaching your grommets to the page and some minor issues I came across while joining my pages and how I attempted to fix them. I can’t wait to share it with all of you and see what you create in the comments!
Planning
I made my pre-joined quiet book pages 9 by 12 inches and limited my decorating space on the page to 8.75 by 7.5 inches. I came up with the working height of 7.5 inches as all four sides of the page needed a margin to allow for space to sew the two sides of the page together (a 1/4 inch seam allowance) while also factoring wiggle room in case the page design ended up being a bit larger than planned (an extra 1/2 inch). I wanted to leave a 2 1/2 inch space on the inner side of the page so there would be room for the grommets which resulted in my design having a width maximum of 8.75 inches (12″ page width – 2 1/2″ for grommets – 3/4″ because I couldn’t come up with 1/2″ seam allowance) Originally, I had planned for a three-ring book but decided instead to do two rings and space them the same distance apart as a normal binder as it would make it easier to store any extra pages in a store-bought binder or allow any binder accessories (pencil-case for extra pieces) to be added to the quiet book in the future. Additionally, if you wanted to have your finished pages used right away you could gift it in a standard binder and always have the freedom to make your own cover in the future if desired.
I planned ahead in case I needed templates by cutting a cereal box to 9 by 12 inches (the entire working page size) and marked on it where the working surface area would be. I also cut the other side of the cereal box to 8.75 by 7.5 inches (the allocated working area). This helped me cement in my head what I wanted before starting. The larger template wasn’t required as much as the smaller one; though it was helpful as a quick item to grab to stop the fabric markers from bleeding onto my table (or textbook) when coloring the fabric. The smaller template, however, was used often to confirm sizing by helping me to lay out any design elements for the page. I found overhandling the pages caused the muslin to start unraveling on the edges so this helped.
Template used to plan out the page.
Materials
- Fabric for the page
- (optional) Interfacing to reinforce the page
- 108″ Unbleached Muslin Natural Fabric by the Yard
- Pellon Fusible Thermolam Plus White Fabric by the Yard
- Dritz Disappearing Ink 2 Pen Pack
- Singer Large 1/4-Inch Eyelet Kit, 12 Eyelet with Tools
- 100pc 1/4″ Grommets Eyelets for Clothes, Leather, Canvas – Self-Backing
- Crop-A-Dile II
- Disappearing ink pen
- Grommets and any required tool
- Any materials required for decorating either side of the page
- Fabric swatches
- Felt
- Embroidery floss
- Fabric markers
- Anything your imagination comes up with
Preparing the Page Sheets
Toddler playing with her crocodile page.
Playing beside each other.
Toddler playing with her bumblebee.
Exploring the ribbons.
Ada checking out her sister’s book.
Playing with the Zoey’s quiet book.
∞ Current: Introduction, Materials, and Planning ∞
8 Responses
[…] to my second post in the three-part series for joining the quiet book pages together. The last post went over how to prepare your page sheets before decorating them. I’m assuming at this point you have two designed sheets. For this post I had already […]
[…] Then when you’re done the reverse side of this page you can pin the two sheets together right sides facing, sew around three sides, put right side out, sew the hole closed, and add grommets. You can visit my previous post on how to join the pages together if you want a more in depth look. […]
[…] page bases or how to sew your finished quiet book pages together you can check out my blog post: In Depth Guide to Joining Quiet Book Pages. I then started by planning and designing some of my felt flowers. I wanted a variety of flower […]
[…] I then sewed it to the reverse of it’s page, flipped it right side out, sewed the hole closed, added another column of stitching for the grommet space, and added grommets. If you want more information on how I turned my quiet book page base into a fully functioning quiet book page you can check out my previous post: In Depth Guide to Joining Quiet Book Pages; Part One of Three. […]
[…] And your page design is done! I then went on to sew the finished page on three sides. As the purple fabric with the Heat’N Bond was rigid and kept folding in I then pinned the seam on the top and bottom before sewing the opening and the space for the grommets so the seam wouldn’t dip in too much and get stuck that way. If you want more information on how I sewed my quiet book pages together you can check out my previous post: In Depth Guide to Joining Quiet Book Pages. […]
[…] If you want more information on how to handle these steps you can check out my previous article: In Depth Guide to Joining Quiet Book Pages. I finally trimmed my ribbons after the pages were joined so I’d know what height I was […]
[…] And your page is done! You just need the grommets added, but I waited until all the pages were done before adding the grommets. If you want an in depth guide in how I joined my quiet book pages you can look at my earlier blog post: In Depth Guide to Joining Quiet Book Pages; Part One of Three. […]
[…] information on how I joined the two sides of the quiet book page together you can check out my In Depth Guide to Joining Quiet Book Pages. I’ve also created a series on my quiet book covers. If you want to check out the other […]