Eliza's Quiet Book/Busy Book Plans

This year two things happened...pinterest...and once I discovered pinterest I came across a quiet book.  I have never looked back!  I had never seen something like this before and I fell in love with it instantly.  I was awake every night for weeks later thinking about ideas for my own quiet book and I started ordering bits and pieces right away.  Everything in my house was now looked at in a different light - "how could that be used in my quiet book??".  We were going on holiday to Florida in September and I thought it would be a brilliant idea to give it to Eliza on the plane to keep her quiet for the 8 hour flight so I was determined to actually make this instead of just pinning it!

Firstly I got a notebook and started writing down ideas that I really liked and that matched together.  I pinned tons of brilliant ideas and I came up with some of my own.  I started with something that I actually thought Finlay would love more than Eliza.(inspired by this pin)

Superman and Spiderman felt outfits

Next I saw this pin and I knew it had to go in the book.

Little felt weather

Then I was stuck.  I was trying to make pages by hand sewing fat quarters and batting together.  This was my first sewing project and I was useless at it!  I do cross-stitch and i managed to make some bunting for Eliza's party but it was a bit duff.  I didn't know anything about sewing and what I should be doing.  I then figured out all about seams and IRONING!!  Not something I enjoy but it really DOES make a difference when sewing!  I never thought I'd be finished with the book at the rate I was going - every night I was sewing and pinning and trying to get parts finished but I couldn't get the actual pages ready!

So I looked for a second-hand sewing machine.  I had never used a sewing-machine in my life but how hard could it be?....Pretty hard!!!

I used a You Tube video to figure out how to wind the bobbin and load it into my ancient machine and how to thread my needle.  Once I figured that out I went on to sewing - usually I just go ahead and do things without taking the time to learn them first but luckily I did not let myself loose on my quiet book fabric just yet....the next thing I knew I thought I had broken my *new* toy!  I was merrily sewing along when the silver part where the bobbin goes burst upwards - that was when i found the thread backlog under the bobbin.  Oh dear I have never seen so much thread tangled!  I thought I was getting on fine with it :) It took me  a.long.time to clear the blockage all the while thinking I had made a terrible mistake buying the blooming machine!  But after a tutorial from my friend who knows all about fabrics and tension and all that jazz I was on my merry way again.  

I decided I still needed a few trial runs before I got to my quite book pages so I made this: 

 
Eliza was potty training at the time so this was her new "pants bag" so she could carry all her clean pants around :)   It has a velcro fastening at the top - no-one said anything about not sewing the sticky back type of velcro so I broke a needle on that before I realised!  I was so impressed with my (very basic) bag and Eliza loved it.  

I was now all set to begin my quiet book pages.....