Page 16: Fishing

Items needed: Blue material for the water (10.25" wide x 9.25" tall), blue ric rac for the waves (10.25' long), a bit of white pellon to trace/color "Peter" or fisherman on (5" x 4" square will do), netting/mesh material* for fish net (4" x 7" piece), 6 buttons (make sure the buttons aren't bigger then your fish bodies!), and 6 pieces of felt in assorted colors for the fish). *Regarding the net/mesh material- I first used a sort of white mesh (think laundry bag for washing hosiery and stuff), but it was very flimsy and hard to work with, so I went to the fabric store and found this great fish-net stuff (very 80's but exactly what I was looking for) in purple. And it was much more durable. I don't know how to explain the fabric other than to ask you to think of the 80's and those fish-net sweaters people use to wear over tank tops. That's the kind of material it is.

Teaches: buttoning, putting things in a bag, colors.

Cut out the following pieces: Cut out the assorted felt pieces in fish shapes. For mine, I actually bought some pre-cut felt flowers (see pic below) in the dollar bin at Joann's, and then I just snipped off some of the petals to make them into fish shapes. For the net, you are going to want to cut it up in a tall rectangle that can be folded into thirds. When you fold the bottom up, that will end up being the pocket, and then the the part of the net that extends to Peter's/fisherman's hands will be the upper third (and will not be folded over).

Directions: First of all, I must give proper credit for this particluar quiet book page. My mom passed onto me a wonderful quiet book instruction booklet called Ann F. Pritt's Quiet Book, which unfortunately now is out of print I hear. Ann has a number of great ideas in this book and you can see the individual templates for each page via this link at the Idea Door. Then click to page 12 to see the "Peter fishing" page. Here's also a snapshot of the page:

You will want to print off the page from the above link and then copy or cut out the net (it will help you know how to cut the right sort of rectangle/shape for it), as well as copy/trace Peter in the boat. I kind of made his boat a little deeper and I gave him additional facial features. I traced him right onto my white Pellon and then colored him with permanent markers and then cut him out.

The first thing you are going to want to sew onto your white muslin quiet book page is the blue "water" fabric. Make it take up the majority of the page, with about 2.75" of the white muslin showing at the top of the page. I actually placed the blue ric rac on at this time as well and then stitched over both the ric rac and top of the blue fabric sewing it to the muslin. I sewed 2 lines of stitches here as the first one didn't seem to catch the ric-rac well enough. Then you are going to want to stitch the sides and bottom of the blue water material to the muslin page as well. I did a 3/8" stitch that was really close to the end of the muslin fabric (I didn't want this stitch to show once the pages were all sewn together).

Then you are going to want to position Peter/the fisherman (and position the net as well, so you can make sure you are spacing it well). Sew Peter right onto the blue fabric/muslin page, stitching him on real close to his edges.

Now, you are going to want to sew the bottom 2/3 of the net up on the sides to make a pocket. You may also have to finish the edge (my fabric came finished) on the lip of the pocket to make it so it won't fray. Then position the net on top of Peter's boat so that the upper 1/3 extends up to his hands. Remember to use this (page 12) as a reference with the net. It will help you a ton.

Make sure your fishes can fit into your mesh net. My fishes fit, but it is a tight fit. My fishes are about 2" long and 1" tall, and then cut of course in a simple fish shape. You are going to want to sew a button hole into each of the fishes. My button holes in each of the fish are about 3/4" long, but yours will depend on how big your buttons are (my buttons are 1/2" wide). Then cut open the button hole with a seam ripper, making the hole about the size of your button's width. Position your fishes around the blue water material where you'd like their corresponding buttons to be. Make a small X inside the button hole onto the blue material. Remove the fishes, and you should have 6 small X's in various spots around the blue material. Remember not to position the fishes too close to the page's edge as you will be sewing about 5/8" of the border of the page under when you sew the pages together in the end.

Sew your buttons onto the X's and make sure you reinforce them really well to the page as they will get tugged on quite a bit by little hands. It's much easier to reinforce now than to have to find and sew back on buttons later. Attach your little fishies and walah! You have a fishing hole!

Here's a pic of my Peter fishing page with raw edges (before I sewed the pages together). Yours should look something like this:

Optional: you can also sew on a text box like I did on my page if you want. I just wrote the phrase "Help Peter catch some fish" with permanent marker on a rectangle of white pellon, cut it out and sewed it to the top of the page.