Page 7: Telephone

Items needed: felt for phone and handset and dial, white pellon circle for border of dial, no-tie shoelace (the ones that coil up- I found mine at walmart, but I know they sell them at most shoe stores), sharpie marker for writing the numbers on the pellon circle, 2 snaps (I recommend getting the smaller, hand-sew-on snaps. I used the heavy duty snaps that came with my eyelet tool and they are just so hard to snap/unsnap I wished I would have used the smaller ones).

Teaches: numbers, snapping, talking on the phone.

Cut out the following pieces: Cut out felt in the following shapes: a telephone base shape (don't forget to cut out the 2 little pieces at the top that protrude and in real life hold the phone on the base. You'll use these 2 little pieces that stick out for placing snaps on later), a circle, and a handset (handset you need 2 pieces thick). Cut out a circle (which is a bit larger than your circle of felt) from the white pellon. You can also cut out a white word box from the pellon if you'd like (mine says "Make a phone call!"). Also cut your coily shoe lace the length you'd like the phone cord to be (with about a 1/2 inch extra that will end up being tucked into the phone/handset.

Directions: First you are going to want to take the small felt circle and cut a circle in the middle of it (to do this I just folded it in half and cut a half circle). Then you are going to want to take a hole punch and make 10 holes around the circle, spacing them so that it looks like the old fashioned phone dial. Here's a fun picture of one for reference:

Above image from http://www.craphound.com/images/giantfonedial.jpg

Then, you are going to want to take your circle of white pellon and place it underneath the felt circle with holes in it. Sew it together by sewing a seam around the inner circle and outer circle (see pic). Then you can take a permanent market and right the numbers in the holes (write on the pellon fabric). Then take this dial piece you've just made and place it in the center of the piece of felt shaped like a phone base. And sew them together by sewing a circle seam around the outter rim of the pellon.Next you are going to want to sew the hand piece. Before you sew the pieces together, you are going to want to place 2 snap halves in one of the copies of the felt hand pieces.

Do this placing the snaps so they line up with the phone bases 2 little protruding things (where you are going to place the other snap halves). After applying the snap halves one of the headset phone pieces, sew the 2 handset felt pieces together, leaving a small hole to stick the coily shoelace end through. Once you stick the shoelace end through, reinforce the stitch a couple of times to make it real sturdy over the shoelace.

Now you are going to want to sew the phone base to the muslin book page (I applied the snaps very last- so they went through the felt and the muslin- I did this to make them a bit sturdier, and to make it easier so I didn't have to sew around the snaps when sewing the base to the page). Place the phone base where you want it on the page and sew it around the age. Leave a little opening at the bottom side of the phone where you can stick the other end of the coily shoelace/phone cord in. Reinforce the stitch where you are tucking in the phone cord to make it really sturdy (that phone cord will get stretched!). The last thing to do is apply the bottom halves of the snaps to the 2 little protruding things (I don't know what to call these!) on the phone base. Make sure they line up with the snaps you've sewn on the handset.

You can also sew on a text box if you want at the top of the page introducing the phone! Mine reads "Make a phone call!". Another idea for this page is to make it look like a cell phone (since phones like this one aren't really around anymore- but then of course you miss out on the fun little coily phone cord which in my opinion is one of the highlights of this page).

Here's a picture of where I got my inspiration- good ol' Alice's (my mom's) quiet book:And here's a link to a sketch she made (way back in the 70's) when she was creating her quiet book. Feel free to enlarge it/print it off and use it as a template: