Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Page 20: Baseball glove/mitt

Items needed: Large square of brown felt (7" x 7"), 2 squares of white felt (3" x 3" each), red thread, black thread, 4 eyelets (brown), one small square of Velcro.

Teaches: imaginative play,

Alternate ideas: I have only boys (thus far), who love sports, so this page was very fitting for them. If you want to make a more girly theme, you could instead do an oven mitt and replace the baseball with a pie, tart or cupcake or something.

Cut out the following pieces: Cut out a baseball mitt/glove shape from the large piece of felt. (My mom gave me a bunch of sketches she made, way back in the 70's, while making her quiet book, and I scanned the baseball glove page sketch and will post it here. It might be helpful to enlarge the sketch picture and print it off and use it as a template when cutting your glove out.) Be sure to make the bottom of your glove big enough to be able to get your child's (and your!) hand in and out of it. My glove bottom is: 5" wide. Then, cut out 2 white circles from your white felt. My white circles are about 2.75" wide.

Directions: You are going to want to first top stitch with black thread on top of the baseball mitt the mitt seams/outlines. I did this on my sewing machine. Note: you are not sewing the mitt to the page yet! I first drew out the pattern of top stitching I wanted lightly on the felt with a pencil to give me some guidance. After you top stitch, you can add fun little eyelets (if you have them handy) as they add a nice "touch" to the bottom of the glove. I added 4 eyelets to mine.
Then you are going to want to sew the glove to the muslin page. I only sewed a stitch up the side edges of the glove and then across the top (not going down the fingers- it will make it too hard to slip hands/fingers in and out). If you look at the pic below closely, you can see where I have a double black stitch- one from top stitching, and one from sewing the glove to the page. Also, don't sew across the bottom or else there will be nowhere to slip the hand through!. Be sure to back stitch at the bottom (where the sides of the glove meet the page, since they will get tugged on lots during play.
Next you are going to want to sew the ball. To do this, first take one of the white circles and sew a piece of Velcro onto the back of it. Sew the other 1/2 of the Velcro to the muslin page above the glove (where the ball will be stationed when not in play mode). Once you've got your Velcro sewn on, you are going to want to sew the 2 white balls together (to make it double thick). I just sewed first around the edges in white thread. Then I trimmed the edges a wee bit so that the stitch lies at the ball's edges. Lastly, I loaded my machine with red thread, put it on the zig-zag function and adjust the stitch length so it is "fine" (will make the zig zag stitches really close together). Then I just sewed 2 red arches on the white ball so that it looks like a baseball. Another idea to make the red baseball stitches is to apply red ric-rac to the ball.

If you want to put a cute little text box on your page, just cut out a rectangle of muslin, write on it with sharpies the phrase you want (mine says "slip your hand into the baseball mitt", another idea is "take me out to the ball game" or "play ball!"), and sew that on too!

Stay tuned! Up next I will give the directions for my picnic basket/place setting page (see preview of it here)...

9 comments:

mylittlegems said...

Hi - I love your quiet book ideas and blog :) Super cute! I recently made a quiet book using place mats from the dollar store :) I am going to do a quiet book round-up and would love to feature and linkk you if that is ok! Thanks- Sharla at my little gems

Gwen said...

WOW! I just found your site randomly from searching on google. I have been reading EVERYTHING for the last 30 minutes! Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I am so new at sewing this seems like quite a daunting task but - WOW - I think my son would just adore this book! Thanks so much for all the time and effort fo this blog. Really well done. I'm sure you will be hearing from me later with really stupid simple questions :).

Anonymous said...

This is the greatest!! I made a quiet book many years ago for my 3 children just as your mom did. Now I have grandkids and have already made one for the first grand. I had lost my pattern and just discovered your blog and it is so great! I have printed out what I need, ready to go to the store for my supplies and get started! Keep on sharing your wealth of information..you are a great teacher!

Anna said...

I was looking on Google for handmade quiet books. Found your link on Thriftyfun.com. I love this quiet book. Exactly what I'm looking for. Homemade, basic materials, but still very cute and fun for the kids.

I started one of my own on 1/2 sheets felt. It isn't going to be big enough to sew together well. I will have to make this quiet book. Thanks for the tutorials. Love it!

Tricia said...

Great Quiet book ideas. I have been making quiet books lately. I have featured pages on my blog leafytreetopspot.blogspot.com

Tricia said...

I would love for you to link my blog to yours. Thanks for the invitation. leafytreetopspot.blogspot.com. Your blog really is great and very informative. So often I get antsy when writing the posts, but you do a very thorough job.

Tricia

Books said...

I am have started to make my own quiet books and it all started here. I have come up with some of m own ideas and borrowed many ideas from others. My books are at my-quietbook.blogspot.com Thanks for the ideas

jelly andrews said...

Thanks a lot for sharing this tutorial. This is so cute. I love it. And I will surely give this idea a try.

Cheri the Quilting Nanny said...

Thanks for sharing. I made 2 for my daughter MANY years ago and now am going to make one for her newborn son. I grabbed your button to put on my blog in my sidebar as I want to follow what you have done and share with others. Hope that is okay. Not going to copy yours..just collecting ideas but enjoy following your adventure in quiet booking!