Quiet Book GROUP

There is a lot of buzz on the web lately about Quiet Book Groups.  It's a social, fast, lower cost, and fun way of putting together a quiet book.  In essence, what it is, is you round up a group of other people interested in making a quiet book.  You decide on what pages you all want to include, you divide up the pages, and then you swap.  So lets say if you had 12 people in your group, and you were each making a different page, so that your quiet books in the end were 12 pages big (6 pages back to back).  You then would make 12 copies of that page you were in charge of.  You could also do it with a smaller sized group and then just be in charge of more than one page.

One of our readers here, Jacki, was wonderful and shared with me a link to her blog showing the wonderful collection of quiet book pages she made in a group.  She also was willing to share her "instructions" for how to do it in a group which you can see below.  She also shared some tips which are in italics.  Thanks a ton Jacki for sharing your instructions, tips and insights!

Quiet Book Group Instructions

- Make 10 pages (they had a group of 10 women)
- Pages should be 10" x 12"
- Page should be created on home decor weight "target" material (Jacki mentioned that this ended up being a hard thing for a lot of the women in her group to find- and that in the future she'd recommend having one person buy a bolt of fabric and divide up the cost, as they ended up with different color and fabric backgrounds because the material varied from person to person).
- Pages are due August 1, 2011 (Jacki's group gave themselves 2 months, they had to extend because of vacations getting in the way)
- Leave 1/2" seam allowance around page edge to allow for binding  (Jacki mentioned that this is a very important thing that many people forgot about and people let their page coverings/extra felt bleed out onto the edge, making it difficult to bind.)
- Make any detachable pieces sturdy and durable -- double felt with interface between, etc
- Only use sew-on velcro -- no sticker kind
- Make all pockets and openings out of hard felt or normal cotton fabric- felt pockets get stretched out easily
- Sew with thread that matches the applique color (no white thread on black felt)- so it looks more professional, and you can't see mistakes as easily!)
- Sew velcro so that the soft side is on the page (that way it won't stick to other pages when you close the book)
- Don't use glue
- This is supposed to be a fun project, so don't worry, we'll all still be friends regardless of how our pages turn out, right??!!

Be sure to check out Jacki's blog and see her quiet book pages!  My favorites of hers were these:


Girl hair braiding complete with hair bows!:

A woman named Juli in Jacki's group made this delicious looking pie for the "weaving" page.  Super cute eh?:

Another person in her group, Erika, made a Mrs. Potato Head page, how fun!:

And Look at this I-spy quilt puzzle Jacki made:

Thanks so much for sharing Jacki!

Have YOU done a quiet book group?  Do you have any tips or suggestions?  Please feel free to leave any ideas or tips in the comments section!  Or email a link to your blog and I'll highlight it here.