Quiet Down!

When last we left the quiet book saga, the pages were done and only the cover remained.  Did I say "only"?  Dun dun DUNNNNNNNNN.  So.  The saga continued at Hobby Lobby...

I bought denim for the outer cover--but not enough to make it from one piece.  So the cover was three pieces sewed together.  The inside cover was a green gingham that frayed like crazy.  

I spent a LONG time making the inside pocket.  I spent another LONG time doing the inside spine piece because it required grommets for the binder rings to go through.  (The pages I sewed together with small loops of ribbon to hook onto the rings.)

I put it all together, sewing the wrong sides together first, leaving a gap.  Then I flipped it and zigzagged around it again.  Lastly I sewed the button on.  Hurray!

Well, it was okay.  The cover was so floppy and too big.  But it was OKAY and we took it on our trip and Boo Boo liked it, floppy cover and all.  

After we got home I decided I needed to pull it apart and add some interfacing to the denim to stiffen it up.  Long story short, everything went wrong.  The gingham was fraying like mad, making it hard to sew with a necessarily narrow seam allowance, the interfacing wasn't sticking...it just looked sad.  Look at it, poor savaged thing:

 

 
So.  I went back to Hobby Lobby.  I got more interfacing, the correct amount of denim and started over.  It still took a long time, but I was able to fix some things that had bothered me, like the pocket construction.  I used a different fabric for the inside (extra from Boo Boo's quilt) and I used a button on the pocket instead of velcro.  I also used smaller binder rings and just folded the fabric edges under, rather than the sew-flip-sew again method.  And guess what, it's so much better!  Easier to hold, easier to look through, easier to put in my bag.  I'm glad I redid it, but I'm even more glad it's done.  Let us examine:

(You can see the grommets here)

It's hard to show much nicer the cover is with the interfacing.  It makes it easier to hold open and look through, plus it just feels so much sturdier. 

(I used two leftover quilt squares for the pocket.  The buttons are extras that came with my white coat [thanks, Nordstrom!])

Saurs!  Sometimes the game is to put them all down my shirt.

So now that it is all said and done, how is it working out?  Well, I won't say that Mister adores every page and plays with them all.  Some are still beyond on him, as I knew they would be (like the ribbon tying page).  But he loves pulling the zippers, playing with the ocean page and finding the apples in the pie.  The crayons, animal tails and button flowers are also popular, but the truth is that he probably loves the dinosaurs in the back pocket best of all...

But he DOES like it and I think he loves the new fishy inside cover.  I think he will continue to like it more as he gets older.  I have a few more pages I'd like to add at some point, maybe for his birthday (dinosaur themed of course), but for right now, I'm happy with where it's at and how it turned out.  It got me to try some new sewing things and hey, I don't even really fear buttonholes anymore.  Plus I never have to make another cover.

Just for easy reference, here are the blog posts for all the individual pages:
Ribbon Lion
Animal Tails
Zipper and Clock 
Pie Weaving and Ribbon Tying  
Ocean and Textures
Alphabet, Button Flowers, Crayon Box and Tiger Tails