Quiet Book Page: Baseball Glove

So it should be obvious by now that our mother is a very gifted seamstress. I'm not sure I fully realized how gifted she is while I was growing up; I just figured all moms made their own drapes, recovered couches, altered formals, sewed dresses, and crafted amazing Halloween costumes. It was just part of the mom territory.

Imagine my chagrin to realize that though I've been a mother six whole months, those powers haven't distilled upon me. I don't completely understand that delay, but while I'm waiting, I thought that now is a good time to use my so-so sewing skills to make things for SourPatch. He doesn't seem fixated on perfection and will willingly wear or use whatever I make him.

I also have found that sewing is ridiculously expensive. Do you know those giant cutting mats at JoAnns cost fifty bucks?!? Are you serious? Fifty dollars for a sheet of green plastic? Yeah right. I'll see what Walmart's costs... and I shouldn't complain! Our family's good friend Carmen is a saint and gave me a sewing machine, so there's one giant expense down. Yet I'm trying to be frugal.

So, I wanted an inexpensive project specifically for SourPatch that will help improve my sewing and can be done in funny snippets of time in-between naps. Thus, the Great Quiet Book Challenge was born...

The Great Quiet Book Challenge

Okay, so basically it's my sisters and me combining forces to create awesome quiet books for our kids. Since Delys already made some pages for Elin a long time ago, we used those pages as the basis for our books:

The Guidelines:

• All pages should be 11"x 12" on basic muslin
• Make 3 copies of each page to be exchanged with each other at a future date

And... those are really the only guidelines we have. Have you seen all the cute ideas on the internet? There are so many really neat books, tutorials, etc. It's fun to also attempt to design your own, too, so when I saw all the "put your hand in the glove" pages, I decided to make it a baseball glove instead! A quick google search revealed a few similar pages out there, but it's kind of hard to make a baseball mitt look adorable, si? Still, I went for it, and here's how it turned out:

Pretty cute, right? And super economical: the muslin was 40% off $2 a yard (thank you, JoAnns!), the felt was, what,  $0.30ish a sheet at Walmart, and I just used odd thread/string I had on hand.

To make the baseball stiff, I dipped it in a half water, half Elmers School Glue solution. It worked really well, actually (though probably makes it toxic to chew... hmm.) I know you can buy stiff, stick-on felt sheets, but they're a lot more expensive and don't have as many color options. Here's a picture of some blue felt I stiffened, too.

I'm really excited about the baseball display case! I cut out a square of the plastic packaging from SourPatch's "Charlie Chomp Chomp" crocodile toy and sewed it right on, easy as pie (half thinking I was going to break the needle, mind... glad it worked!) It already had this nifty snap on it, too.

I did buy a package of iron-on transfer paper from amazon for $7. I figure I can use it for lots of quiet book pages (and other projects!) I know some moms are really legit and needle-point on the words in their quiet books. I'm confident that this method looks a lot neater and cuter than my hand sewing.

So there you have it! The first page of the Great Quiet Book Challenge. I'm excited to see the rest of the pages to come!