by Sherri Sylvester | Mar 7, 2014
Welcome Sew-Along Friends, we get to sew this week! Today I have the pattern pieces, cutting list and tutorial so you can finish your first Quiet Book page. I remember feeling a great sense of excitment, accomplishment and beginning when I finished my first page and I hope you will feel the same once we are finished this page. It’s all going to proceed a lot faster now and we’ll be finishing up a page every 2 or 3 weeks!
Here is my finished Sew-Along page, beside the original quiet book page for comparison. Ready? Let’s go!
You will need:
- 1 Small Safety Pin
- Thread: 4 colours that match your cloud, sun, house and grass fabric
- your normal sewing gear, including a ruler and iron
- House Page Pattern Pieces (click to download the pdf)
Before we begin/Important Notes:
- Download and print the pattern pieces pdf on letter size (8.5″ x 11″) or A4 paper. Important:Make sure scaling is set to ”None” or “Actual Size” when printing. Once you have printed the page, measure the 1″ test square (it should measure 1″ in both directions) to ensure the pattern pieces will be the correct size.
- When you are sewing this book it is good to remember that some of the edges will be covered after the book is completed and sewn together. 1/2″ on the top edge of your page and 3/4″ on each side edge will not show in the final project. The illustration below shows these edges.
- Remember to use your iron liberally when you are sewing this book. It is going to be a work of art when you are done! Since it is thick and some of the pages will not be iron-able once you are finished with them it is advisable to take all of the care you can to remove wrinkles so they are not accidentally permanent in your final book.
Cutting Your Fabric:
- Check your printed pattern page for a cutting list of all pieces you will need to complete this page.
- Pre-wash (if possible, a baby might be chewing on this book!) and iron your fabric well before beginning.
- If you are cutting the cloud shape out of fur it is easiest to trace the pattern piece on the back of your fur fabric and then cut it out. BE SURE to trace the pattern piece upside down so it is facing the correct direction when it is turned over.
- Cut your pieces according to the list on the pattern page. If possible, cut the pieces that require fusible web/interfacing together with the webbing/interfacing. This will make them exactly the same size and it will be easier to iron them later.
Here we go:
Door Prep: (1) Press the interfacing onto the back of your door fabric. (2) Fold the door in half across the 4″ side, so it is 2″ wide. (3) Stitch across each short end with a 1/4″ seam. (4) Trim your corners and edges if desired. (5) Turn, press well, set aside.
Sky Prep: (6) Lay your sky pieces together in the order you would like. (Note: If you are only using 1 piece for the sky skip to step 12.) (7) Place the top sky piece on top of the middle piece right sides together. Stitch across the top of these pieces with a 1/4″ seam. (8) Iron the seam open. (9) Place the bottom sky piece right sides together with the middle piece. Stitch across the bottom of these pieces with a 1/4″ seam. (10) Iron your seam open. (11) See photo below for a front and back view of your finished sky.
Fuse the Sun: (12) Follow the directions on your fusible web to iron your sun in the top right corner of the sky.
Fuse the House, Peek-A-Boo Fabric and Door: (13) Place the house and cloud fabric (both are backed with fusible web) on your sky where you would like them. Make sure the bottom of the house lines up with the bottom of the sky. (14) Carefully lift the bottom of the house and slip the peek-a-boo fabric (backed with fusible web) into its place under the door. 1/4″ on the sides and top of this piece will be covered by the house shape. (15) Place the door in its place with the open edge to the left. The top and right edges fit into the door shape in your house. 1/4″ on the left side will be covered by the house shape. There will be a 1/4″ between the bottom of the door and the bottom of the sky. (16) Remove the cloud fabric temporarily to avoid melting it. Iron the fusible web, try not to move your pieces by accident. You will be ironing the house, peek-a-boo fabric and the left side of the door. It helps to open the door so you can properly fuse the fabric underneath.
Attach the Grass: (17) Place the grass fabric right sides together along the bottom of your sky/house piece. Stitch along the bottom with a 1/4″ seam. Do not sew over the bottom of the door! You will be sewing right below it. (18) Open up your fabric and iron your seam open. If the door is too high stitch this seam again with a more generous seam allowance until you are happy with the door placement.
Interfacing your Page: (19) Turn your fabric over so the wrong side is facing up. (20) Centre the 9″ square of interfacing you cut over the back and fuse it to your page. Make sure there are no obvious large wrinkles before you fuse everything together, they are hard to get out later!
Attach the Cloud: (21) Place your cloud where you’d like and lightly iron to fuse it to your page. Iron from the BACK of the page, or use a press cloth over the cloud. Be careful not to melt your fleece or fur! (22) Use a close, wide zig-zag (satin stitch) with matching thread, to attach the cloud permanently to your page. If you are using fur, brush the fur to the centre before beginning so you stitch over it as little as possible. You do not need to stitch along the line where the house and cloud meet, we will do this later. (23) See photo below to see the finished cloud applique.
Applique the Sun: (24) Change your thread to match the sun fabric and use the same satin stitch to finish the rounded edge of the sun.
Applique the House: (25) Change your thread to match your house. Begin stitching around the house in the centre of the right side of the roof. (26) Continue stitching around the house shape until you reach the top of the door. Open the door to avoid stitching over it by accident. (27) Make sure to stitch as close as you can get to the door without stitching over it. (28) Raise your presser foot with the needle in the fabric and close the door. (29) Turn the corner as usual and continue stitching down the left side of the door and around the house until you reach where you started. (30) Brush the cloud fur (if using) to one side while stitching next to it. See the photo below for a finished view of the house applique.
Satin Stitch the Grass: (31) Change your thread to match the grass. Satin stitch along the edge between the grass and the sky. Stop and re-start stitching to avoid the areas where the house and the grass are already satin stitched together. You will need to open the door to stitch that area. (32) See the photo below for a finished view of the grass stitching.
Apply the Cap Snap: (33/34) Choose the location for your snap carefully and apply it following your manufacturer’s directions. I generally place mine on the far right, centred top to bottom so it looks like a door knob. Please take care when attaching the snap. If it is not attached properly and a child is chewing on the page it may become loose and create a choking hazard.
Finish with the Ribbon: (35) Use your small safety pin to attach the ribbon to your finished page. Since this is a long Sew-Along you would hate to lose it!
Finished! How do you feel?! Put your page somewhere safe or leave it out for a while where you can see it. I’m keeping all of my Quiet Book things together in one of my many handmade bags that doesn’t get nearly enough use. It’s really handy to have it all together.
See you again next week!
by Sherri Sylvester | Mar 5, 2014
When I started this blog I figured I would eventually tidy up my space enough to let you see where I work. After all, I’m always super curious about where other people sew, naturally I think some of you might be too! Since my machine went in for maintenance earlier this year I caught a break and a little time and I was able to clean and clear out the whole space. I have also discovered while looking at these photos that I love colour, comfort and being able to see everything. Just in case that wasn’t already obvious. (hee hee!) It’s interesting because I spend a lot of time making the other parts of my house as minimalist and simplistic as possible. I likely have too much to say about my space, so I hope you are okay with a bit of a novel today. I edited it down to this – really!
My husband and I share this 10 x 10 ft room. We used to take up space in the basement, with some of the kids toys and our TV. Since we both work from home we decided about a year ago that it was healthier to have a door on our work space. That way we could make our basement and main floor into a relaxing space instead of being reminded of work every time we were in them. After much discussion with the girls (who agreed it would be fun to move in together) we bought bunk beds for them and took over this little “nursery room” on our third floor. The result has been a much better home/work balance – so nice! It’s been especially nice that I’ve been able to keep my space clean for a month now, amazing for my husband who takes up only a little more than 3 square feet of one corner of the space and likes to work in a clean environment!
My desk is actually a mash-up of 2 Ikea Expedit shelving units along with some hollow core doors from our hardware store. Somewhere out in blog-land is the wonderful woman who suggested using a door for an inexpensive table-top and I will be forever grateful – if I could only find her again! We have cut the doors into multiple pieces and mounted the centre one on two Ikea table legs. The back of each door is screwed into one long 9 ft pre-primed piece of mdf that holds the whole thing together. Quite a feat in a small room, but it’s so heavy it doesn’t have a chance of falling apart! One day I will paint the edges of the doors, and maybe the tops too, but since it is a work-space the chances are slim on that one. This also means the counter is table height and I mostly sew standing up. I love the freedom I feel to move around, iron things when needed and generally feel more active.
The side wall holds my favorite framed book cover – the Singer Sewing Book from 1972. Another one of my husband’s grandmother’s things I was lucky enough to acquire. Eventually the frame will be painted – maybe black? I’ve also hung my thread holder and a drawing of a sewing machine that my oldest made, probably 2 years ago now! This wall is also where I try to stay organized and the clipboards hold my schedule and thoughts in check. They are move-able so I can take them down for scheduling and then put them back up as needed.
Stash much? As much as I love fabric, surprisingly I don’t have more than one shelf length of gorgeous quilting cottons! All my fabric is folded onto boards as mini-bolts and shelved on this bookcase I found my local Re-Store for only $20. It sits in the room’s closet space, though we have removed the closet door. It was pretty dark in there and the colour matching wasn’t going so well! Everything is loosely arranged in rainbow colour order. Flannel/Canvas on the top shelf. Quilting cottons and fleece on the 2nd shelf. The third shelf is dedicated to apparel fabrics and the 4th is for knits, though I ran out of room on this one and had to start a basket on the floor! The bottom shelf holds fabrics that I have rolled up because I have lots of them, and all of my interfacing, batting and fusible web. Outside of the shelving I’ve got rolled up vinyl to the right and my ironing board and iron are stored on the left wall. I’ve also got a bin for things I have made that don’t have a purpose yet. What do you do with “extra” projects? Do you have any?
The top of the closet holds the clothing I want to re-purpose, stuffing and all of my daughters’ flannel receiving blankets that I hope to one day make something from. Oh, and you get to see the lovely colour the walls were when we moved into our house. Very “unisex nursery yellow”.
The back of the door is right next to the closet and opposite my sewing area. I’ve hung the artwork my mom made me and I keep some sewing projects there. Especially my cargo duffle, which is really one of my most favorite projects that I have made to date. I think the artwork was meant for my kitchen, but I love it here, it reminds me of my family (my parents live quite far away in Texas) and the saying is so true. I need to be reminded that keeping a clean house is not worth the effort sometimes!
Back to the desk area then? I’ve got so many bins and containers here it’s pretty crazy, but they all have a purpose. The flowered tins hold my scissors and seam ripper, camera, miscellaneous receipts and my calculator – among other things. The blue box was my grandmother’s and I have an office divider to hold all of my rulers. Inspiration and my Canadian Online Fabric Store business cards are kept on the bulletin board I made at least 7 years (and no blog) ago that just happens to perfectly match the wall, I must like that colour!
The bottom shelf holds all of my re-purposed 80 oz pickle jars, and the jars hold everything from ribbons and elastic to zippers and Velcro. I’m slowly expanding my book collection and I’m excited to hopefully pull off a top from the Stylish Dress Book soon… we’ll see!
The top shelf is saved for storing my girls’ quilts-in-progress and my fat quarters are stored in a shelf that used to hold diapers and nursery items. I’ve also put up some pretty things, ribbon and my selvage jar, which will one day become useful and make itself into something!
Last but not least it’s my sewing machine. It’s not fancy, but it does everything I need it to and I love working with it. I’ve also got my favorite cartoon character to stare me down while I sew – Marvin the Martian is hilarious. I’m not sure why I like him so much, but it was a bit of an obsession when I was just out of high school and I may or may not have 3 stuffed ones hiding in the girls’ closet (one of them as tall as my kids!). The handsome face on my bulletin board is my husband, such a fun Instagram pic he posted I had to print it out.
That’s about it I think. I’ve got baskets of scraps and drawers with fabric paints, pencils and bias tape makers under my machine. One dedicated to all of my patterns tucked neatly into dollar store yellow envelopes. Too many bins of projects waiting to be finished hiding everywhere and of course more thread and tracing paper too. More things than you would ever care to read about I’m sure!
I’m such a curious person – where do you hide/keep all of your things? As I sew more I wonder where and how people without a dedicated room keep their stuff. Of course, if I didn’t collect projects so easily I would have less stuff, something to think about!
I hope you enjoyed the tour. I’d love to hear about your space. Do tell!
by Sherri Sylvester | Mar 3, 2014
I’m calling it – I’m officially BACK and not sick at all! Even if I’m not, maybe acting like it will force the last tiny germs to take flight? (I think I can hear their little voices yelling as they run away right now. Yep – that’s them… I think… )
I figured an easy something cozy was finally in the works this morning and I got to finish up my plans for my lovely infinity scarf from last year. Turns out I could make it, but I couldn’t make it comfortable, or “not wrinkly” or easily look good. All three things being important parts of my usual wardrobe – though I do tend to hold lightly to the wrinkly bit. The scarf just frustrated me until I saw something at one of my local stores that I figured might help.
Someone had the brilliant idea to attach a light linen-weight scarf to the side of a chunky knit scarf. Two-for-One. Perfection! You CAN have cozy and a pretty print at the same time. So I folded up my lovely piece of Liberty and un-stashed my perfect shade of light coral-ly pink knit and then they sat… for months… until today. It was finally the perfect project to do when feeling slightly under the weather. Lots of pins and a couple of straight lines of sewing can’t be messed up easily, and thankfully for me it went well. I decided to encase the pre-hemmed Liberty fabric edges with the knit, sort of like self-binding a quilt.
Now the whole thing is even more super-soft and has a bit more weight, so it lays better when I put it on. It is also a perfect weight for a warmer winter day, and I can imagine it being a perfect early-spring jacket scarf. I might even take it into the Fall knowing me, colour knows no season over here. White belts year-round for everyone! (Within reason of course!)
Anyone else feel like they go through winter hiding in scarves and trying to forget that it’s -15 degrees (Celcius) outside? I’m not a winter person and was definitely super glad to go inside after the photos!
by Sherri Sylvester | Feb 27, 2014
Welcome back to Week 2! We get to find the fabric for our first page today. I’m excited to have some of you along for the Flickr ride and many more pinning the Sew-Along on Pinterest. A couple of other exciting things have happened since Week 1’s post.
- If you missed the Flickr invite you can find out more in this tutorial on how to join Flickr. We’ve got a group page for updates and photos so we can all sew-along together.
- I’ve created a specific page for the Sew-Along – just click “Sew-Along” at the top of this website. It will detail all of the information you need to know to sew with us and help you keep track with a full post list as they are published. (Including buttons and ideas for sharing your book.)
The first page we will make together is the same one I started the book with when I made the original – the House page with the peek-a-boo snap door. I love the mismatchiness of the sky and stripey/paisley house on this page. My new page is going to be a tad more “civil” looking, but still with a three-tiered sky. (Cohesive Look Sewers Note: You will not need your cohesive page fabric for this page.)
Before I go into the details – here is your scrappy shopping list for Week 2. (Click the list, Print it, Find your fabrics!) If you have a large scrap bin it is likely that you won’t need to by any fabric this week. This page is made up of small pieces of your favorite scraps. (Don’t forget to read the other details below so you don’t miss any information!)
Fabric Details:
For each of these fabric pieces I have given you a scrap size that is larger than you will need EXCEPT for the fussy-cut peek-a-boo scrap that hides behind the door. This piece needs to be cut carefully because the snap you apply will cover part of the fabric – take a look at the page photo above and make sure your fussy-cut scrap has a “snap space” on the centre right side. You don’t want your elephant to end up with a snap for a tusk like mine did!
All of these fabrics (except the cloud fabric) should be quilting cotton weight to get the best look for this page. If the fabrics are too thick they will not work well when they are layered together. Match the fabric’s number in the photo with the description below for more detail. As you can see, I stitched the grass together from lots of small scraps to make a piece of fabric large enough to use, be creative!
- Matching ribbon for the “tab” on the side of this page: 3.5″ long (any width)
- Fussy-cut peek-a-boo scrap:2 1/4″ wide by 3 1/2″ high
- Note: 1/4″ on each side of this fussy-cut piece will be hidden under the house edges and will not show
- Sun: 3″ square
- Cloud: 4″ wide by 3″ high
- can be made from fleece, fun fur or similar ” fuzzy cloud-like” fabric
- Sky: 3 pieces each 10″ wide by 3″ high OR 1 piece 10″ wide by 7″ high
- House: 5″ wide by 6″ high
- Door: 4 1/2″ wide by 4″ high
- Grass: 10″ wide by 4″ high
Other Items:
You will also need a few other things for this page. Again, match up the numbers with the descriptions below for more detail.
- Cap Snap: You will need 1 snap.
- Use any type of snap, as long as it has a cap you can attach to the front of the door to look like a door knob.
- Also make sure it can be opened by small fingers, some snaps are heavy duty and can’t be opened by a child.
- Door Interfacing: 1 piece 4 1/2″ wide by 4″ high, medium weight fusible interfacing (you have this from your Week 1 shopping list)
- Page Interfacing: 1 piece exactly 9″x9″ square, medium weight fusible interfacing (you will have this from your Week 1 shopping list)
- Fusible Web: 1 piece each sized the same as the cloud, house, sun and fussy-cut peek-a-boo pieces noted in the fabric list
That’s it for this week! Have fun finding your fabrics. I’ve made a spot for mine in my handy Cynthia Frenette Pouch so they won’t get lost before I stitch them together. I had to fussy-cut my peek-a-boo fabric twice, so I learned… boo! I will provide pattern pieces for cutting next week and we will also sew the whole thing together. As usual, please let me know if you have any questions: email sherri@threadridinghood.com or leave a comment.
by Sherri Sylvester | Feb 26, 2014
So, I’m been sick, which is a bit of an understatement. Especially for my husband who has been AMAZING and has run our house for about 5 days straight now while I lay on the couch. Thankfully after a lovely IV from Emerg last night I am hydrated and (more) ready to get feeling better.
I did have a burst of energy on Sunday and so I managed to make a new winter hat for my oldest – not sure it was a smart decision, but it got finished anyhow. I was rewarded with a very pleased 6 year old who refused to take her hat off on Monday, and wore it all the way until bedtime. Way to make me feel good! That is what sewing is about. She told me that she loves her hat, but it was the fact that I made it for her that she likes the most. (Tears anyone? Maybe that’s my sickly self speaking!)
It is a pretty simple construction method that I have used in the past to make this pink one. The “cat” part of the hat is interpretive, since now that I have made it I’m not sure if it looks like the intended cat or maybe a squirrel or an (ever popular) fox?! Either way my daughter is most definitely convinced it is a cat! Which is good, thankfully. The whole thing is fleece and goes together pretty quickly. I decided not to photograph it as I sewed due to obvious reasons on Sunday, but I will gladly make another if someone would like a tutorial.
