For sewing stiff felt in quiet books, it’s best if you sew with the needle position to the left. The stitch should be 1mm away from the edge of the felt. When sewing felt on the page, use the backstitching. When sewing removable parts, don’t backstitch but make knots by yourself at the beginning and the end of the stitch.
Sewing felt pieces on the fabric or felt page base
When you want to sew felt pieces on the page, you should use the method, where you put your sewing needle to the left position. For sewing quiet books, you will use this type of sewing the most.
You need to put the needle in the left position. Check out your sewing machine manual on how to do that.
You align the felt edge with the center of the sewing foot. It is much easier to sew nicely with the same distance between the edge of the felt and the stitch.
The stitch should be 1 – 2 mm away from the edge of the felt. In this way, the stitch will be the strongest, and the felt piece will look nicely sewn.
You should try with your sewing machine, which is the final setting for this type of sewing. When you get the result you like, save the settings and always use the same one.
When you sew the felt pieces on the page base, you always backstitch the stitch. If you don’t want backstitching is seen on the activity page, you can leave 10cm of both threads (needle thread and bobbin thread) at the beginning and the end of stitching and make knots at the back of the page. This procedure will take you a lot of additional time, and my personal opinion is that the thread on the front is not distracting, and this is a waste of extra time.
Have in mind you always sew the felt pieces on the prepared page base – it means that firstly you stiffen the fabric or the felt you would use as a page base. You can find instructions in our Quiet book patterns library.
You use the same method when you want to sew together two identical felt pieces. But in this case, I recommend you don’t use backstitching, because some sewing machines can leave a mess of threads on the bottom side of the sewing piece. Leave 10 cm long bobbin and needle threads at the beginning and the end of stitching, transfer one of the threads on the other side, make knots and cut the excess of the threads. In this way, the removable piece will look lovely on both sides.
Sewing small pieces of felt
If you need to sew a tiny part of felt on the page or the other piece of felt, you should use the method where you put your sewing needle to the center position.
When you start to sew small felt pieces, you don’t sew around the edges, but you sew on the centerline of the tiny piece. Look on the photo what does that mean for the small drop and the small number.
You can use felt glue to fix the smal felt pieces. This way, sewing will be easier.
When you read our instructions, you will find terms such as: »sew«, »sew on«, »sew around«. It always means you should use the method with your needle in the left position. It is written down when you should use the technique with the needle position in the center.
If you want to make a quiet book with a no-sew method, read more about how to glue stiff felt in quiet books.
If you want to know more about the whole procedure of making quiet books, about all the benefits and about materials you need, read my Quiet book guide.
I hope these tips will help you with sewing a quiet book. Enjoy while creating a beautiful quiet book for your child!
