Quiet Book Page 6 --- Open the Barn to Find . . .

Five Farm Animal Finger Puppets and more 


There are many variations of barn pages on the Internet.  I checked several out and adapted what fit my likes and abilities. 

Here is my barn page and a few things I did to make the process easier. 

I'm making 12 of these and am pretty sure  I got some of the windows even!
Hopefully the little users won't notice or won't care ---- and their parents may find it
either charming or . . .  indicative of my declining years and eyesight. 

I found a picture for my laying hen, colored it, and machine stitched a plastic window (cut from a zip lock bag) around it. 

As I have indicated with other pages, I like to add texture and things to feel whenever I can.   

When you "open" the hay you find three eggs.  

I sew my objects on using one of three things: dental floss, fishing line or heavy button thread so there is no chance of anything coming loose that could create a swallowing hazard. 

The eggs are threaded on fishing line. 
The barn door latches are coat hook and eyes, sewn on with button thread.

Catching Rays is not just a suntanning term!

I cut four pieces of fleece and crisscrossed them for the sun's rays.
I overcast the sun, catching the rays at the same time. The unintended pluses were depth to the sun and loose rays that move.

When you open the barn door five farm animals are there 
to greet you.

The chicken is usually in the pen also, but I wanted to show it's details---cut out with
pinking shears, with the stitching following the lines of the body leaving the wings open.

The finger puppet patterns are also found on line---from very simple to very elaborate. Mine are variations of some of them.  For me, the hardest part was deciding on the right size. I didn't know how to make copies of the available free patterns so they came out the correct size so I had to judge the best I could. 

Except for the chicken (who has added wings) all of my puppets are the same shape. All are the same size --- about 1-1/2 inches wide and 2-1/4 inches long.

The cow is cut from a cow print piece of felt (that was on sale for
10 cents and happily was enough for all 12 of my cows!)  If you don't have cow felt you can just sew a couple of spots on white felt. 

The sheep is from a scrap of fleece I had on hand.

I used tiny  beads for most of the eyes and noses. 

The pig's snout is embroidered French knots. 

This vial probably holds close to a zillion beads and cost less than $2.00 at Wal-Mart. 

The biggest sanity and time saver, for me, was creating
one-piece ears for the animals.  Cutting out tiny individual ears and managing to sew them on was way too much for me.  Although my drawings  are rough I hope they will give you the idea of what I did. 

I admit some of my pages are a little lot more elaborate than most of my offerings but sometimes I get carried away.  I know I am going overboard on these future great grand-kid gifts but I am having fun.

Please don't panic and feel that Simply, Gail has abandoned her simplicity and simply gone even more crazy.  I promise I haven't. 

Simple quiet book pages will provide every bit as much fun. Trust me when I say the ones I made for our kids when they were small were very basic. Our future great-grand-kids won't need all this ---- but for some reason, at this time in my life, I do.