Busy Book aka Quiet Book aka Toddler interactive book

Long title, huge 16 page project!  We've been through 8 "bugs" since January so blogging went by the wayside.  I've been enjoying taking a detour from paper crafting to create a book for my toddler boy who is now 28 months.  Little hands will keep themselves busy, or we can guide them with interesting things.  Screens and electronics are nice, but they are only two dimensional.  How does anyone learn to manipulate their THREE dimensional environment without engaging with it?  Plus toddlers are major league growing and learning, even though their communication can't always keep up. 

So, last year I mined Pintrest and Google images and drove my family crazy planning 3 books.  All of March 2015 I've been driving everyone crazy as I try not to drive myself crazy building this one book.  I've had so much fun figuring out details and making sure it will grow with my boy for awhile.  I've also been researching "free motion sewing", basically doodle sewing by machine on Youtube. A new friend gave me her extra free motion sewing foot to try.  That lit a fire under my motivation and made it even more fun, and bonus it sped up the sewing.  Here are some process pictures to show the sheer mess I work with.  Trust me, I know what I'm doing and that works for me, LOL!  I think I take after my Dad's creative process, he would make a huge mess as he worked too.

organized piles of all my flotsam & jetsam donated and thrifted stuff

classic, sewing at the kitchen table complete with makeshift ironing board on a thick piece of felt fabric

free motion sewing in action

close up of altered free motion foot, zig zag stitch in use

Leah Day on Youtube shows exactly how to alter a generic free motion sewing foot to make this work.  The foot "hopping" she mentions wasn't a concern for my machine so I only altered the foot from closed (oval) to open (C) shape.  I recommend her videos if you are interested in learning free motion sewing.

Basically I checked my sewing tension, put on the free motion foot, left the feed dogs up, switched my stitch length to ZERO and switched from zig zag to straight stitch as needed, foot down of course.

After 7+ heavy days of sewing, many evenings of handwork details, I finished this book last night.  I will show more posts over the next few days since it is going to be an Easter gift to my little boy.  I'm so excited to see him enjoy it!  Happy Easter and Happy Spring everyone!!!