Toddler soft book: Do not attempt this project :)

Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. But this project took significantly longer to put together than most of what I do. I usually sew after the kids are in bed, and I can finish most projects in one or two nights of dedicated sewing. This one? Took the better part of a week. It wasn't particularly hard to sew, but there were just a lot of steps.

As with the tutu, this came from one of the project idea sheets that you can pick up for free in any Joann's store. They are also available online. Here is the link.

This particular project was for a toddler soft "book" made out of fabric. Noob already has some store-purchased soft books, and they are great! They hold up to everything a baby can dish out -- chewing, pulling, folding, you name it.

The original project called for a shapes book, featuring a different shape on each page. But, well, you can buy books about shapes anywhere. Even before I started, I could tell that this project was going to take a lot of work, so I wanted to do something truly unique.

The original project suggested printing out the names of each shape onto special fabric paper that you can put into your inkjet printer. That gave me an idea: Rather than just printing words, why not print pictures as well?

And that's how "Noob's Book of Family" was born. Each page features pictures of Noob's close family members (parents, sister, grandparents, and aunt): Here are two pages:

Here are the changes I made from the original project:

1. Obviously, I used photos, instead of shapes.
2. Rather than using inkjet fabric paper, which allows printing directly to fabric from an inkjet printer, I used inkjet t-shirt transfer paper. Then I transferred the printed images to plain white muslin. I did this because I wasn't sure whether the inkjet fabric paper was washable -- and anything intended for use by a baby needs to be washable! This solution was also a little cheaper than the inkjet fabric paper.
   
   Here is a picture of the muslin with some of the pictures transferred onto it. You can also see the Heat n Bond on the back of the pictures:
   
3. I only made 5 pages, rather than 6. This was not intentional. I didn't read the directions carefully when I was buying fabric, and only bought five colors of flannel :) It worked out for the best, though, since 5 pages was more than enough work!
4. I wanted each page to make that "crinkly" noise, because Noob loves toys that do that. To accomplish this, I added two pieces of cellophane for each page, I got the cellophane at Joann's -- it's designed for use in wrapping gift baskets. I cut the cellophane to be the same size as the flannel/batting for each page, and inserted it in between the batting and one of the pieces of flannel.

A couple of tips that I want to remember if I'm ever crazy enough to do something like this again :)

• Leave about 1" on the border of each page for the grommets. I centered the pictures on each page, and so the grommets ended up going through some of the pictures. You can see it in the "Mom and Dad" sign on the red page above, as well as on the picture of Noob and me on the left of the yellow page. It doesn't look too bad, but it would have been nice to avoid it.
• I used a pinking rotary cutter to cut out the name signs, and it was really hard to cut straight. For the last few that I did, I added a dotted border in Publisher before I printed, and then cut along the dotted border. That helped a lot. Here's a close up of one in progress, showing the dotted border:
  
• I had a really hard time getting the pictures lined up straight on the page, relative to the seams that I ended up sewing. You can see how crooked the "Book of Family" sign is on the cover! I think it would have helped to draw the seam lines on the flannel, line up the pictures relative to those lines, and then sew along those lines.
• The instructions call for half a yard of Warm and Natural batting. I think Joann's just wants to sell more batting :) You only need 8" -- the batting for all the pages can easily fit into the width of batting by-the-yard, with enough left over in case you mess up.
• I had to do a lot of ironing! Ironing to transfer pictures to the muslin, then ironing to bond the Heat n Bond to the muslin, then ironing to fuse the Heat n Bond + muslin to the flannel. Eventually, I figured out the easiest way to do this:
1. Transfer the pictures to the muslin.
2. Before peeling the paper off the picture transfer, bond the Heat n Bond to the muslin. I used a big piece of Heat n Bond to bond to a bunch of pictures all at once, and that worked well.
3. Wait for everything to cool off.
4. Remove the transfer paper from the muslin. Save it!
5. Cut out the shape.
6. Remove the paper from the Heat n Bond. Place the picture in the desired spot on the flannel. Place the original transfer paper on top of the picture. (This keeps it from sticking to the iron!) Iron to fuse the picture to the flannel. Remove the original transfer paper from the picture.
• Don't do this project on a deadline! e.g. Christmas :) I'm pretty sure Hubby wanted to kill me by Christmas Eve, because I left this project to the last minute and had to spend soooooooo much time working on it, rather than helping him with Christmas preparations! It's not hard, but it does take a lot of time, so plan accordingly.
• This would actually be a really good "travel project" (a project to do while on the road), because you don't need a sewing machine for a lot of it. You can get all the pictures done and pages assembled with just scissors and an iron. Once that is done, the sewing goes pretty quickly.

Despite this being a big pain to put together, I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. Of course, Noob is much more interested in stealing his big sister's Christmas presents than playing with his, this one included. Sigh. But hopefully he'll appreciate it in the months/years to come!

(Back cover of the book :)