Christmas present for my nephews

I’m making a cloth book for my nephews for Christmas. I’m not quite finished yet, but I think it won’t be long now. Here’s what I have so far:

Page 1: A big rectangle that with a 7-inch zipper. The material is from the package Randi sent me for the Bloggy White Elephant Gift Exchange last Christmas. Click here to see a photo of the material with the pattern she sent. AHEM.



Inside, I stitched the word “ZIP” in white embroidery floss. Clever, yes?



Page 2: Puffy shapes that Velcro. I attached a string to each shape so they don’t get lost. To make the shapes, I ironed four alternating colors of grosgrain ribbon down onto a piece of fabric and then zig-zag stitched the overlapping edges (sort of like this pattern from J. Caroline Creative). Then I cut out each shape and set it aside. Then, I took some white fabric and quilt batting, cut out one of each shape and quilted the white piece with the batting. Then I attached a small piece of Velcro to the white part, sewed the white piece to the ribboned piece, right sides together. Then I turned them right-side out (a major pain since they’re so small and the ribboned shape was way more stiff than the white part) and stitched the holes closed. Then I used my machine to do my new favorite stitch to outline each shape, attached the other half of the Velcro to the page, and sewed on the strings to keep the shapes from getting lost.

Page 3: Balloons that unsnap! I made the balloons out of felt and embroidered the “strings” and the bow with dark grey floss.



Page 4: Blue felt pants with a buckle. I love the embroidery stitch for finishing edges. It looks neat on the felt. I took this buckle off of an old pair of shorts that my oldest son hated and never wore.



Page 5: Tie your shoes! I traced around one of my youngest son’s shoes and stitched it on with green felt. I tried several different ways to do the part that laces up, but in the end, I decided that the plastic canvas would be pretty sturdy. I just cut out the shapes, stitched them with the blue yarn, leaving three holes for the laces. The orange shoelace is from a stash of old laces I’ve had forever. It’s going to be stitched to the shoe part as soon as I get to it. That way, it won’t get lost, either.



Page 6: My favorite page so far. The red and white flag is from a stash of little gingham squares I’ve had for years. I made a purse from them when I was like ten years old or something like that. Also, the blue shiny fabric is very stretchy. I cut it from the sleeve of my old drill team uniform. I had cut the sleeves off and altered the uniform so my daughter could play dress-up in it. I think the shiny material makes a neat looking car. I did the windows just from some white fabric I had. I made the wheels with two layers of black felt stitched together and turned inside out. I stitched around the outside part of the wheel with dark green thread to match the buttons. This project is the first time I have ever used the buttonhole foot on my machine. It’s the first time I’ve even MADE a buttonhole. I had to practice first, but once I got the hang of it, I did one in the center of each wheel. The buttons are a dark green color (I didn’t have any black buttons the right size).



The “pages” are made from light blue denim. I initially started with white cloth pages, but they started to pucker and go all wonky when I stitched over them. So I used the denim instead and used Stitch Witchery to iron the white fabric to the backs as a stabilizer and it’s worked out really well. The white flaps on the sides are how I am attaching the pages to each other, and once I have them all attached together, I’m going to use the parts of the flaps between the pages (I left about 1/2 inch in between each page) to stitch between each page to attach the whole thing to the cover. I’m going to use an old pair of heavy denim camo pants for the cover. I’ve already made the handles out of brown seam binding and padded the insides. I may finish the edges of the outside cover with the same brown seam binding if I have enough left. The cover will just have the boys’ names stitched on the outside or something like that. I’ve toyed with the idea of putting a big pocket on the outside and putting two little brown felt bears inside, each embroidered with their names, but I haven’t decided for sure yet.

I’ve been working on the book for about five or six days now and so far, the biggest challenges I’ve faced have been keeping little hands off of all the pieces and parts and working around this serious sinus headache I’ve had for the past two or three days.

I’m surprised at how much fun I’m having just making this. They better like it!