How to Make a Quiet Book: The Cover

Susan and I collaborated together to make the covers for the quiet book, so you get a double feature today! We wanted everyone to go home with as close to a completed book as possible, so we decided to make the covers instead of each making an additional page.

 

About Susan:
I have been married to my husband Tyler for 5 years and have a 18 month old daughter Adelaide. I'm a stay at home mom and am also a Mary kay beauty consultant. Being a mom, taking care of my family, sewing and crafting take up most of my time. 

I love to get crafting ideas from pinterest and checking out the fun stuff going on at LullabyLubbock.

 

About Laura:
If you're reading this blog chances are you know more about me than I can squeeze into one paragraph, but just in case . . . I've been married to Danny for six years. We have a 17 month old son, Cannon, and another son on the way, due January 6, 2012. 


When I'm not chasing Cannon, I enjoy photography, crocheting/crafting, reading, couponing and running (when I'm not pregnant). When I'm not scouring Pinterest, a few of my favorite blogs include: Money Saving Mom, Dear Baby, Passionate Homemaking, 1+1+1=1, and Go{4}Pro Photography.

How to Make a Quiet Book Cover

We heavily referenced Creating by Cami and Serving Pink Lemonade's cover instructions while creating our pattern. 


If you'd prefer to skip the pictures, you can download just the instructions here.

Supplies Needed for One Cover:

• 2 pieces of flannel for cover
  Cut into 23.5 x 11.5" rectangles
  *Final cover will be 23 x 11"
• 2 pieces of flannel for strap
  Cut into 6.5 x 2.5" rectangles
  *Final strap will be 3.5 x 1"
• 2 pieces of cotton fabric for binding
  Cut into 4 x 11.5" rectangles
  *Final binding will be 3.5 x 11"
• 1 piece of Pellon Peltex 50 Stabilizer
  Cut into a 23.5 x 11.5" rectangle
  *Final pellon will be 23 x 11"
• 1 piece of fleece
  Cut into a 6 x 6" square
• a spool of contrasting thread
• 2 three-inch 3-ring binder rings
• 1 sew-on snap

Supplies Needed for 20 Covers:

• 10 yards of flannel (for covers and straps)
• 1.5 yards of cotton fabric (for binding)
• 14 yards of Pellon Peltex 50 Stabilizer (for stabilizing)
• 1/2 yard fleece (for pocket)
• 3-4 spools of contrasting thread
• 40 three-inch 3-ring binder rings
• 20 sew-on snaps

*We alotted for a .25" sewing seam on all of our calculations.

Step 1: Cut all fabric/stabilizer into correct sizes.

Step 2: Sew fleece pocket on one piece of flannel (half of the flannel pieces, if you're making covers in bulk).

Step 3: Fold flannel for strap in half, right sides together, and sew on one long side and one short side.

Step 4: Turn strap right side out and top stitch on two long sides and one short side.

Step 5: Iron both longs sides of binding cotton under - we did a quarter inch seam.

Step 6: Pin one strip of cotton binding in the center of each piece of flannel, one for the inside of the cover and one for the outside of the cover. 

Step 7: Top stitch all binding pieces in place. 

You now have an inside cover piece:

. . . and an outside cover piece:

Step 8: Place both cover pieces right sides together and sew all edges, leaving a small opening to turn the cover right side out.

NOTE: Susan had a Serger, so we used it to do this step, thereby eliminating alot of the excess Pellon and flannel that would have made the cover bulky and lumpy. If you don't have a Serger, you could simply trim the corners before flipping your cover right-side out.

Step 9: Turn cover right side out.

Step 10: Pin the strap in the center of the un-sewn opening on the cover.

Step 11: Top stitch around the entire cover.

Step 12: (NOT PICTURED) Hand sew male side of snap onto the flannel strap. Hand sew the female side of the strap onto the front cover. 

Step 13: Sew four button holes through the binding cotton. We positioned our button holes 2" from the top and bottom of the cover and then centered them 2" apart. Use your seam ripper to cut open button holes.

Step 14: Thread binder rings through button holes.

Finished Cover!

NOTES:

• Do NOT use 3-ring binder rings. We ended up using ribbon on the final, completed books because the binder rings caused the pages to stick out of the cover too far.
• Make the book wider. We had 18 pages to fit in this book and we though we over-estimated making the cover 3.5" wide, but we really could have made it 4" wide (or even 4.5") to fit all of the pages comfortably.
• We tried to use Susan's eyelet/snap punch to put four eyelets in the binding (instead of sewing button holes) but we needed to use the large eyelets because of the thickness of the binder rings and her punch wouldn't fit the large eyelets. In hind sight, we could have used the small eyelets since we ended up just using ribbon as our binding.
• We also tried to use Susan's eyelet/snap punch to put the snaps on the cover, but again, the flannel/pellon was too thick for the punch, so we had to sew on the snaps.

Up Next: The Seasons Tree