DIY Crinkle Fabric & Rice Baby Book

One of Luke's favorite toys is a crunchy-crinkly fabric book. Since he only has one I thought I would make another one. I know they sell the 'real' crinkle material at the craft store but I'm on a kick to use what I've got, so I used waxed paper instead! 

Gather:

Wax paper or the real deal crinkle material

4-5 fat quarters or scrap fabrics in different patterns

Approx. 3 inches of ribbon

Rice (optional)

Scissors, pins, thread and sewing machine

First, I tore off a piece of wax paper and cut it down to be slightly larger than I wanted the pages to be when complete. It felt like less of a commitment to decide this with the wax paper than accidentally cutting my fabric too small! My finished book is approximately a 5 inch square, so if you're the measuring type go for a 5.5" square of wax paper and a 5 3/4" square of fabric. Cut an even number of squares and wax paper, for my three page book, I had six squares of pairs. Sew your wax paper to the fabric. I probably should have used more pins because the wax paper slipped around a little during the power sewing. Although this makes the pages funny, it does make the book crinkle more which is precisely the point of this toy.

After sewing down each square, assemble the pages by pinning the right sides of your pages together. You should have the wax paper sides visible to you. Sew three sides together and turn your pockets inside out, making them actually right side out. Sheesh, it's pretty obvious I'm not up on the seamstress lingo, huh? Bear with me.

At this point, I decided to put a couple handfuls of rice in the middle page (actually Cody deserves the credit on this one!). It adds a fun extra touch to the sensory element of this book. I also decided to add a make-shift binding to the outside edge to give a cleaner and more secure finished product. The ribbon was another last minute detail so we could loop his teething rings through it as well. Now it can go on the stroller, car seat or playpen toy bar. Since the binding would hide the raw edges of fabric, I just stitched each one closed without folding the cut edge inside. Then, I pinned the three pages together (ok so technically its one page and a front/back cover) and stitched on the binding. It's certainly not a professional looking product. Wonky-Wonkville is where we're at here. But its the sort of perfectly-imperfect look that I'm really good at. 

And now we are undergoing product testing, hopefully it stands up against the Luke Test.