How to Make a Quiet Book: Gum Ball Counting
About Katie:
I am Katie and once upon a time I had a blog where I
documented our home remodel and family happenings, but it has since taken a
backseat! I am a stay-at-home mom to our 9 month old son, Zachariah, and soon
to #2 who is coming in May! I have a wonderful husband who works hard and goes
to school for his MBA so that I can stay home. We are both graduates of Texas
A&M University, where I obtained a Special Education degree. I taught
special education for 6 years. Our family loves Jesus, traveling, and eating our
way through every city we live in or visit! In my free time (ha..) I like to
cook, sew, read and recently, nap.
How to Make the Gum Ball Counting
Quiet Book Page
Supplies: (I shopped only at Hobby Lobby…small child, pregnant, one-stop shopping)
- 2.5 yards Pellon Peltex 70 Ultra Firm Stabilizer (cut into 8.5x10 pages)
- .5 yard each of light blue and red batiste fabric
- .25 yard red and white striped fabric
- 1 sheet each of stiffened felt in red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, and pink (or whatever 7 colors fit your fancy)
- 1 sheet of regular gray felt
- 1 yard double-sided iron-on interfacing (Pellon brand Wonder Under)
- .25 yard single-sided medium density interfacing (Pellon brand)
- 2 packages of 75 velcro dots
- red thread
Inspiration:
I looked around at lots of different blogs and pinterest
posts about quiet books and after being assigned a “counting” page, I thought
the gumball page was perfect (plus it was one of the suggestions, which made my
decision even easier)! I made my own template, which I can share with you if
you email me at kamorris05@gmail.com.
Page Assembly:
1. Cut
Pellon Peltex 70 Ultra Firm Stabilizer to 8.5x10 pages using a rotary cutter
and self-healing mat (must-haves in my opinion).
2. Print
templates on cardboard paper (for stiffness and durability) and cut out.
3. Trace
bottom of gum ball machine and top of gumball machine onto Wonder Under (easiest
if you trace all 20 tops together and all 20 bottoms together so you can cut
the Wonder Under paper apart and iron each group onto their respective colors…)
4. Iron
the tops on blue and the bottoms on red (very important, otherwise you will end
up having to go buy more Wonder Under. I may have done that. Remember:
pregnant, 9 month old, tired), then cut all of the shapes out. I numbered each
one so that I could keep up with it easier.
5. Using
the remaining gum ball and gumball retrieval flap (the gray piece in the
finished picture… sorry no better name in this brain of mine!) templates, cut
out 20 of each color gum balls in stiffened felt and 20 flaps in the regular
gray felt.
6. Iron
the single-sided Pellon interfacing on the red and white striped fabric. If you
are an over-achiever like me, dig through your old scrapbooking materials and
uncover a scalloped-edge template to make the fabric look like a candy shop.
Measure out 2 inches and .5 more inches (if making a scalloped edge and make
lines across the length of the fabric (perpendicular to the stripes). This will
create your striped top. If you are making the scalloped edge, trace the
scallop from the 2 inch mark down. Cut the strips and then cut the scallop.
From there, you will be able to cut the strips down to 8.5 inches to fit on
each page. I was able to get 4 pages from each strip, meaning that I needed 5
strips in total to make 20 pages. (Hopefully this makes sense.. Email me if you
need clarification).
7. Now
all you have left is to assemble everything. I worked from the bottom up,
ironing the gum ball machine down first (oh and I cut a semi-circle out of the
top of the gum ball machine bottom piece because my fabric was thin and you
could see the red showing through the blue gum ball circle on top). Then I
placed all of my Velcro dots on. I chose to do the soft-side on the page and
the rough side on the dots, which worked out perfect because the rough side
sticks to the Pellon 70, meaning that I didn’t need dots for under the striped
scallop for hiding the dots. Last, I sewed the top of the striped fabric to the
top of the page and the gum ball retrieval flap to the bottom of the gumball
machine.
8. If
you want, you can number each of your felt circles so that your child can
practice counting as they play!
Up Next: Buckles
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