Whose Baby Am I?

This is a cloth book for my seven month old grandson William. The book came from a panel printed by Elizabeth's Studio. I  gravitate toward the soft look of fabrics of this mill who adapts the artwork of talented artists into screen printed images. This collection of baby animals is from the work of artist John Butler.

Other examples that I have made from Elizabeth's Studio fabric are a cloth book My Baby's Day post for 12/17/12, a cloth book Little Baby Signs post for 12/16/14, and a pair of sepia toned seashore print pillowcases post for 8/17/16.

Sometimes the page numbers for a cloth book are printed outside the area of the book page itself as they were in Whose Baby Am I?. I actually prefer this method since then the images can be used as quilt blocks without the pesky numbers being there. But I needed to devise a way of recalling what order those pages should be in once I'd cut off the page information. I trim each page except for the bottom where the number is. I then "assemble" the raw book and take cell phone photos that help me to know what goes where. The front and back covers are easy since they are slightly larger. The middle is a giveaway too for this book, since it spans two pages. Here is the book sequenced as it should be, with a wide white paginated margin at the base.

I can safely trim off that larger lower margin, since I have a record now, and sandwich the two book layers, face to face with a piece of batting to give it a bit of substance. I also layer in some crinkle material on Etsy or crinkle material by American Felt and Craft for baby and pet toys in the cover stack or in the middle stack to make some noise for the baby when he plays with the book. I was whizzing along since these books do not take long to make and on my third layered stack, the middle one, I noticed something wrong when I went to turn it right side out. I had placed both printed pages facing the same direction instead of face to face. The wrong side of that zebra page would have been showing. Whoops. 

It is amazing how something that you can sew by zipping around the edges in less that 2 minutes can take 15 or more minutes to pick out. Because the back side was batting, the stitches sunk in and made picking them out more difficult, since I could not work from both sides easily. Ugh! Once I had right sides facing, I did a double check to be sure I had not put one in upside down. But I had not. Whew!

Turned, steamed, and edges top stitched, the completed Whose Baby Am I? book looks cute and crinkles adorably. I hope William likes it.

Linking up to Main Crush Monday #138 and Let's Bee Social #249.