completed project: (soft) cloth Paddington book

I completed another project! That’s two in less than a month!

A few months ago, I bought several panels on fabric.com, in hopes of making cloth books for the baby. The Paddington Bear ABC book was the first one I attempted.

I cut the pieces out a couple of weeks ago, and then a week later, I ironed on the interfacing (only to one side of the two “pages” so it wouldn’t be too thick.) Last night, I started sewing. Sewing took me 2.5 hours, and it shouldn’t have been that long. There were four pages (front and back) that I sewed inside out, leaving space to flip it right side out. Rather than doing a slip stitch to sew the pages completely shut, I top stitched all around, making sure that I did it close to the edge so the openings were really closed. (This was different from the instructions on the panel.)

Then I ran into some trouble. I had to sew down the middle and there wasn’t much guidance on the instructions. It said to machine baste. I did that, and still ended up breaking a needle. I broke out the walking foot for my machine, broke another needle and then realized I hadn’t lowered the foot lever, causing the needle and foot to go all over the place. Once I realized my mistake, I was able to sew pretty easily down the center of the book and I was done.

The baby has been all over the book today. I’m almost ready to take on a few more cloth books (I have 4 more panels and I have my eye on another one or two on fabric.com!)

One of my only complaints about the book is some of the pairings of objects with letters. I find it odd that “x” is “eXtra good”, “y” is “yummy” and “z” is “zzzzz”. Seems to me they could have used real objects, but at the same time, the baby is only interested in turning the pages and chewing on it.

Overall, it was a success.