Hi reader!
I've always loved sewing and art, so having seen a lot of 'quiet-books' doing the rounds on Pinterest, I decided to take up the challenge to make one myself.
First I drafted my own patterns and then worked them up using a lot of little bits and pieces I had in my stash of fabric and sewing accessories. I found this a lovely project for being creative and using up odds and ends like ribbons, bias binding, cute buttons, embroidery threads, fabric and felt.
I had a lot of different ideas for rooms that I wanted to incorporate, so I chose to take on a bigger and longer project but if you want to make your own using any of my patterns, then you could always just pick and choose the rooms that appeal to you. I'm in the process of making a second smaller 'apartment' style one so stay tuned!
The first picture is of the finished (and bound) project (I might still add ribbon ties to the open side), while the second one was taken before I attached the pages all together. Something to think about if you make your own is how you want the finished project to look. It's extra work to bind it all into a book and limits which rooms are visible at once to the little one playing with it, but it is sturdier, more portable and can be stood up on the table. You also have to bias bind pages (rooms) back-to-back, which is a bit fiddly... As you can tell from some of my not-so-neat edges, my sewing machine struggled with the thickness of the layers!
Another option though, is to make a lot of individual rooms (quilting-style) and store them in a bag or box. This way the child playing with it can then choose how to layout the rooms in relation to each other. You could even turn them into a wall hanging that rolls up. It's completely up to you and how far you want to experiment with this project! :)
The design process and choosing which fabrics and colours to use for the project took by far the longest chunk of time while the sewing itself didn't really take all that long. I used a sewing machine to bias bind the pages together but everything else was hand-sewn - you only need to know how to blanket-stitch, straight-stitch and back-stitch to put it all together.
I'd advise making the doll and any pets first, as then you can check for relative size and fit as you go along making the pages. If you want to design your own, then you need to take scale into account. I decided on 18cm x 18cm for the room size (20cm x 20 cm with the bias binding edges). Another thing to think about is whether you want the dolls clothes to be interchangeable (this affects how you sew them up).
These are the doll and dog that I designed:
Here's a brief overview of the spreads I went for:
Front and Back Covers:
Kitchen and Dining Room:
Garden:
Each page has a lot more details and little parts, so in my other blog posts, I'll break them down individually, show you how I made them and share the patterns. I hope you enjoy looking at what I made and please feel free to use the patterns for your own personal and non-profit purposes in order to make your own lovely project or a gift for someone else. However, these designs took me a lot of time to make and I have chosen to share these for free and not sell them. I want you to be aware that I am only sharing these on the understanding that you will not distribute these patterns yourself: please always link to this blog page and refer to me as the creator/designer. Thank you and happy sewing! :)
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