The Mother of All Projects

Here it is: my crowning achievement!! Over two years in the making, it is everything I hoped it would be when I started it. It took about 3 months of real work after I picked it back up, and I enlisted my grandma, who crochets, knits, and quilts daily, and my mom, who recently retired and was able to help cut and wrangle little people so we could work.

Cover: match the letters to your name

Put your hands in the mittens

Mirror

Lift the flap and a photo of you is there

Weaving

Match the shapes to their names

Buckle the belt

Match the balloons to the correct colors

Fire truck and police cars go on the track

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head

Count the train cars

Put the coins in the piggy bank

L'aig was so excited, I could barely get the photos taken before he wanted to play!

Ribbon pulls

Open the barn doors and hay window

Help the frog catch flies

Count the beads

Put the mail in the mailbox

Feed the monster

Unbutton the flowers

Lace and tie the shoe

Help the cars through the tunnels

Kite puzzle

Peel the banana

Feely page

Dedication page

Finger maze

So there it is. It took me forever to complete 3 or 4 pages by myself 2 years ago because I hand-sewed everything (including all the small pieces for the Potato Head pages). And that was when I was only making 2 books. Since Blessing came along, and I was going to have help, I decided to go ahead and make him one too.

Once I figured out that fusible web works great with felt (wish I'd known that 2 years ago!), we made swift work of it. I would draw all the shapes on the web during the week, then when we went to Grandma's on Fridays, I would iron it to one side of the felt, then have her or Mom cut out the pieces, and then iron everything onto the page. We still had to hand-sew on buttons and snaps and things, but Grandma enjoyed doing that during the week while she watched TV. I also invested in the Babyville Boutique snaps and snap device, which made it even quicker to finish.

All in all, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. The last two pages were made possible courtesy of my new Cricut, which I'll tell more about in another post. Almost all of the pages were based on ideas I saw online (after much research), but the patterns themselves (with the exception of the Potato Head pages) were drawn by me. I link to all of the pages on my Pinterest board.

That's it. Now I'm working on many, many other projects, and I'll share about more of them later on, but I just wanted to get these on here for tonight. I might post again tonight (depends how sleepy I get after the baby goes to bed) with some of my other completed objects. Until next time, happy Easter and God bless!