Rainbow Quiet Book 2

I took a break from selling on Etsy for most of December to devote some time to personal craft projects and learning to use my Christmas gift from my husband...a new embroidery machine!  I am in love with it and I can't wait to make some fun toys for the shop with it.  In the meantime, I wanted to make another quiet book for Rhys to play with during our Christmas road trip, and I finished it just before we left!

This book is similar to my first Rainbow Quiet Book, but I included different activities in this book and added decorate buttons to most of the pages to use up some of my button stash :)  I also fastened the pages with button holes and baby links this time, instead of grommets and binder rings.

I embroidered my son's name onto a piece of felt and sewed it to the cover.  It's not perfectly straight but I'm happy with it!

The red page is a lacing activity (remember my Quidditch lacing page?) where he can lace a white string through the loops of ribbon on the rainbow.  The string is stored behind the clouds at the bottom of the page and I glued blue felt to the tip of the string to make it stiffer and easier to lace.

The orange page is an I Spy activity with different colored button shapes hidden in the white buttons. I also sewed matching buttons around the border as a guide for what to look for.

The yellow page has a rainbow of six zippers to play with, because he can never have enough zippers!

The green page is a buckle/weaving activity that includes six buckles.  It was a little tricky trying to figure out the placement of the buckles to get them to overlap without covering each other, but I love how it turned out!

The blue page is a shape matching activity, and it was my first attempt at using my embroidery machine! The shapes were all sewn by the machine which is why they look awesome and perfect :)

The turquoise page was my second attempt with the embroidery machine and again...I was so impressed!  I embroidered the color names onto each piece of felt, and then stitched a rectangle around each one to make them into little tiles that Rhys can velcro on and off.

Finally, the purple page is a simple little abacus activity to practice counting!  The purple felt warped a little while I was pulling the strings tight to sew them down, but at least I know the strings and beads are secure!

Here's a close up of the button holes...next time I might make them a little bigger but I think these worked out well for a first attempt!

Felt Christmas Advent Calendar

Last year, I decided to make a felt advent calendar as a new Christmas tradition for our family.  It was my first felt project and it took me weeks to finish it, but I was so proud of the outcome!  I never had a chance to take decent pictures of it, so better late than never :)

I've learned so much since last year and I know this process would go a lot quicker if I attempted it now (I hand cut all of those numbers!), but this project was definitely a huge undertaking!  I wanted to make an heirloom piece that we could add to and update throughout the years, so I'm happy that I put a lot of time and thought into it.  I hand sewed the entire thing except for the advent pockets!  The ornaments are all made out of felt and embroidery floss, and I glued a small loop of satin ribbon to each one to hang it on the tree.

I hand stitched a white outline around the tree and hand stitched all 24 buttons onto it.  I used my sewing machine to sew the advent pockets. I layered four strips of felt on top of a large square piece of felt so that they were each slightly overlapping, and sewed vertical lines on top of them to make the separate pockets.

I scoured Pinterest for ornament ideas, made a list of what I wanted to make, then hand cut and hand stitched all 24 of them! I plan to update some in a few years once I get better at hand sewing.  I also realized after I took these pictures that one of the ornaments was still hiding in a pocket...it's a small red heart in case anyone is wondering :)