Quiet Book Pages for Boys

I spent every spare moment (and, admittedly, some I probably shouldn't have spared) over the past few weeks stitching away on Elijah's birthday present. This boy is serious trouble during church services.  He is not good at sitting and playing quietly.  He wants to be climbing up the curtains or chatting with the family in the pew behind us or doing somersaults down the aisle.  Naturally the way to solve our Sunday issues was with a giant hand-sewn quiet book.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I adore hand sewing felt.  It seems that every year or so I find myself happily buried in a pile of felt and embroidery floss, working on a huge project.  (You can see another of those projects--Ellie's felt food-- here, in a frighteningly old blog post.)

So, while Jason and I watched our current show  in the evenings, or while I listened to audiobooks during quiet time in the afternoons, I stitched and stitched.  The book was finished the evening of Elijah's birthday and we took it to church last Sunday.  While it didn't solve all of our problems, it at least kept him busy for a few minutes.

Then he started trying to pull it apart. :)

Patterns I used:

Build a Monster
Do Some Laundry
Build an Ice Cream Cone
Sandcastle
Let's Cook Breakfast
Circus Train
Forest Quiet Book Page
Cookie Shapes and Colors
Flowers
Cars Page
Dinosaur 
Mr. Potato Head

There are many beautiful quiet book patterns out there.  One of my favorite blogs for felt creation eye candy is Imagine Our Life.  Absolutely gorgeous.  Many of them were too complicated for the amount of time I was able to devote to this project, so I simplified many of these patterns for Elijah's book.

For the cover I stitched two 9x12" pieces of felt together using running stitch in many different colors of embroidery floss. I am quite smitten with how it turned out.