I am on a quilting rampage. I finished another square a couple nights ago, and today during conference I cut out all the pieces for my last 3 squares! Woohoo!
This is the other thing I worked on this last week. I got the idea from some crafting blogs I was reading. It's called a "Busy Book" or a "Quiet Book." Lots of these other bloggers use them for Sacrament meeting and other times they want their kids quiet, but realize asking them to sit silently, still, with nothing to do is futile. Here are two of the blogs I got ideas from: craftingchicks as well as Quietbooks. I didn't do an amazingly professional job on these, but it was really easy, really fun, CHEAP ($7.50 total) and only took me one afternoon!
The above is the front and back cover of the book. Everything, unless otherwise noted, is made of felt. The left side is a mail box with paper in it to write notes and the right side is a tennis shoe for kids to practice tying their shoes! I simply cut out the shapes I wanted and then stitched them onto the felt. The letters I hot-glued on.
For some reason this picture came out sideways. But the top page is an ice cream cone that I sewed with different stitches on my machine using brown thread. Then I cut out the felt scoops. The bottom page is Noah's ark. I only sewed the boat along the bottom edge so the stick animals can fit into the boat. The water is made of shiny blue thread.
These animals are my favorite part of the whole thing. I just used googly eyes and small popsicle sticks and cut out fun animal shapes for the ark.
The left page is a little pocket that holds the alphabet for practicing letters. The right page is a felt tree. I sewed the trunk on with brown thread and made the black garbage bag to collect all the leaves in. I was surprised because I didn't know if Ruth would like it or not, but she loves pulling on the pages. She especially likes to shake the animals and listen to their eyeballs shake around.