LDS Quiet Book Extravaganza

I finally finished enough pages to put my quiet book together! Landon already had a store bought Bible quiet book, so I focused on a Book of Mormon/Church History/LDS general theme. For materials I used a heavy weight Pellon for the pages. It is much easier to work with vs. felt, and lasts a long time. I used a combination of stiff and soft felt for everything that goes on the page. I would have used all stiff felt, but Hancock Fabrics did not have all the colors of stiff felt that I wanted. Instead of stitching on the lettering, I wrote on the Pellon with sharpie. SO much easier. I used many different blogs for ideas, and tweaked the designs here and there to make it work for me. Here are the pages:

 The first page I did was Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life found in 1 Nephi 8. The iron rod is a silver ribbon, and Nephi can move along it. The fruit snaps on and off and the tree and Lehi's hand. The great and spacious building is off to the left. I got this template from http://laurathoughts81.blogspot.com/2011/06/quiet-book-week-summary-template.html.

Next we have a puzzle page- helping Nephi build a ship. The sail doubles as a pocket for the pieces and the pieces are attached with velcro. I found this idea on: http://toblertales.blogspot.com/2012/09/quiet-book-week-build-nephis-boat.html. I liked the tip to make the ribs of the boat when the boat was whole, then cutting the pieces apart. I made my puzzle a little tricky, hoping that Landon will be able to do it one day.

This page is my only original page! I wanted a lacing page with a Book of Mormon theme. So, as per Austin's suggestion, we get to help build King Benjamin's tower. I sewed slots in the upright supports of the tower, and then got a brown shoelace to lace up. The tent in the corner buttons down and has a little boy in side that I created to be like Landon. If you can't tell, the gray thing in the background is supposed to be half of the temple in the distance. My strategy for organizing pages is to iron on wonder under to the felt pieces that will be completely on the page. For this page, it was the upright supports and platform on teh tower, the temple, and King Benjamin. Then, I iron these pieces on the Pellon. From there, I sew over it to make sure it sticks well. Then I sew everything else. 

Here it is all laced up!

 Next we have Ammon protects the sheep. The Lamanites' arms come off and stick on with velcro. I found this idea on the "laura thoughts" blog mentioned earlier.

Oh No! They Lost their arms... 

 Next page... "Put on the Armor of God". It is a dress up and matching page. I made the modification of attaching all of the pieces to skinny elastic so none of the pieces get lost. I also made a pocket for the pieces on the side of the page. The bad part is that the elastic gets twisted a lot, and some of the pieces can barely reach the matching spots. I got this idea from laura thoughts as well.

All put away

All dressed up... and messy!

Clothes in their matching spots

This is one of my favorite pages. It is Joseph Smith climbing Hill Cumorah. He moves up the hill along a string of elastic, Angel Moroni Velcros on and off, and the stone is a flap. When lifted, it reveals a vinyl pocket complete with sword of Laban, gold plates, and a Liahona. There is also a secret tree flap with a bird underneath. 

Look what we found under the stone!

Next is the general LDS themed "Open the Scripture case" page. I had some left over faux suede fabric from making baby shoes, so I used that as the scripture case fabric. I wanted a zipper page, and this was my first attempt at putting a zipper in anything! Considering all of that, I think it turned out great. My favorite part of this page is that the scripture case can hold whatever you want, and that you can change it as your child gets older! Right now, it has black felt "Bible" and "Book of Mormon", along with a pass along card with Christ on it, a small card with the Articles of Faith, and I am going to put some pictures in it of the Chicago temple. Maybe later, we can put the 1st presidency and Quorum of the 12 matching games, scripture mastery cards, mini actual Book of Mormon, hymn book, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Our last page is the "Help the Missionaries" There are missionary finger puppets, and 3 houses that are flaps with people behind them. The sun has some rickrack that is not sewn down all the way so it can be pulled on and moved around a little. Since this is the last page, I sewed a pocket into the back of the book and this will hold the missionary finger puppets as well as one of Austin's old missionary name tags. If I ever have a girl baby, I will make some sister missionaries too :)

For the cover, I had to take my favorite ideas from a multitude of different websites, and ultimately, I just gave it a whirl without a pattern to go off of except for my own pages. I bought some VERY heavyweight Pellon, and made the cover out of that with flannel covering it that Landon chose himself. I sewed the outside, then cut a skinny long piece to be part of my "binding". I am binding my book with 3 binder rings and eyelets on the pages. This way if I ever want to make more pages, I can swap some out, or just add more.

Here are the eyelets and rings. I have not sewn the binding into the book yet, but that is the next step

Another look at the binding. I am going to attempt to add a zipper all the way around, so stay tuned for more!

This was meant to be an overview of what I did for my book. If there are any questions, feel free to ask and I can give more info as needed. It is a fun, but time consuming project that can take over your life!