Building a soft book library

I don’t know how it happened, but my little quilter turned one last Friday. It is amazing to look back and see how much she has developed over the past year, finding her voice, learning to feed herself, crawling, standing and developing a clear list of likes and dislikes.

One of her likes are books. She loves playing with her books, looking at all the pages and turning the page herself when we’re done reading a page. My husband and I are pretty proud of her early love of books as we both make our living off of words, writing and editing them.

Before she was even born, I started working on building a library of her own. But the challenge is at one year old, she is pretty rough with just about everything. She even managed to bend a brand new board book that came in the mail today within minutes of me giving it to her.

That’s why for her birthday I made several soft books for her. Soft books are fabric panels that are cut apart and sewed back together as page spreads with a layer of thin batting between to make a book made of fabric. They’re very sturdy and washable, which solves the second issue of her being in a stage where EVERYTHING goes in her mouth.

For her birthday, she got soft books on Veggie Tales, The Little Mermaid, The Peanuts and a special tale about adopting dogs that goes along with the fabric line I used to make her bedding. I’ve still got about a dozen more soft book panels to make for future holidays, or just for the heck of it. My goal is to fill this cube entirely with soft books she can play with, mangle and enjoy as she develops her love of reading.

If you’d like to learn how to make a soft book for a little quilter in your life, check out the video tutorial below to learn how.