Catching Up With Mickey

Ages ago I started working on a Mickey Mouse themed quiet book for Rowan.  Off and on again I've slowly been plugging away at it.  Here's the pages I've finished so far:

First page

Velcro the clubhouse together

Page 2

The buttons are sewn on the page

Page 3

Page 4

Goofy even has his signature pineapple underpants!

Page 5

Page 6

Velcro the different hats on Donald

Page 7

I used faux fur for Daisy's ponytail

Page 8

Finger puppets!

This is one of Rowan's favorite pages so far!

Page 9

The puzzle pieces attach with velcro.  However, I wish I had used a different image for the puzzle.  It's actually trickier than you'd think!

Page 10

Toodles has glue, a screwdriver, a hammer, and of course, the mystery mouse-ka tool!

Page 15

(No I didn't miscount, there's 4 pages I haven't finished yet.)

Practice your numbers

Page 16 & 17

There's the shoe garage, mistletoe mountain, the sandy desert, and Mickey Lake.  

The fact that I know all these places explains why my brain can no longer retain useful information.

Page 18

This is currently Rowan's all time favorite page.  He loves going fishing for gooey fish!  

There's a magnet inside the 'hook' and those are paper clips sticking out of the fish.

There's still 4 more pages to go, and thankfully those aren't quite as detailed as some of the above pages.  Of course, there will be a cover, too.  

Sadly, I will not be selling these books in the future.  While it hasn't been particularly difficult to make, it's pretty time consuming.  Oddly, most of the time is spent just cutting out all the little pieces!  My plan, however, is to eventually sell a pattern with instructions.  When I get it all ready, would anyone like to test it out for me and see if it makes sense?  Pretty place?  With cupcakes?

Here Comes Mickey

I finally finished the patterns for my Mickey quiet book!  I'm really quite excited.  At first, there were only going to be about 10 pages, but there ended up being 18!  Once I started brainstorming, the ideas just kept coming.

For a quick preview, here's a list of the page titles:

1.  Build the Clubhouse
2.  Button Mickey's shorts
3.  Tie Minnie's bow
4.  Help Goofy get dressed
5.  Buckle Pluto's collar
6.  Find Donald's hat
7.  Brush Daisy's ponytail
8.  The gangs's all here!
9.  Match Clarabell's cookies
10-11.  Count Pete's beads
12.  See what tools Toodles has
13.  Solve the picture puzzle
14.  Try on Mickey's glove
15.  Count the Mickey's
16-17.  Drive the toon car
18.  Catch a gooey fish

Yesterday I got all the muslin and interfacing cut out for the pages.

I know using felt for the page bases is all the rage right now, but I chose to go a different route.  I'm just not convinced that felt will hold up over time to the rough use of little hands.  My grandma made most of hers out of muslin and they're still in great shape for my little guy to play with.  Also, muslin (with some light interfacing) is oober cheap compared to using high quality felt!  I added some lightweight interfacing to give the muslin a little more body and to help hide some of the stitching.

Here's a little embroidery trick I've picked up this past year: print your pattern off on the computer, cut it out, pin it down, and just stitch right over it!  When you're done, use some tweezers and pick it out.  This is by far the easiest way of transferring a pattern.  & it works on any type of material.

Now to start cutting out all felt pieces....