Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Quiet Book - Chick and Egg

This page is fairly simple, a baby chick hatches from an egg.

Template:
http://www.puppetpub.com/eggtemplate.pdf

Chick:
I decided that I wanted my chick to be a puppet, so instead of rounding the bottom, I opened it up a bit. Cut 2 and sew the edges together, but remember to leave the bottom open so your child's hand has a place to go.

The pattern has no face drawn on it, so you are on your own. My daughter made a paper version of this chick when she was in preschool, so I copied hers. Two small dots for eyes, and a V-shape for the beak.

I think that the baby chick would be equally adorable as a small stuffed animal. If you chose to do this, you could leave the bottom rounded. Cut 2, add a little stuffing to the inside, and stitch close.

Egg:
The first step is to decide on the placement of your egg on the page. The egg is BIG, so arrange both pieces on the page at the same time to ensure that there is enough room.

Pin the bottom half of the egg to the page. The bottom-half of the egg is a pocket for your baby chick to sit in. Because of that, you want to leave most of the "crack" (diagonal cuts) open, but I did stitch the first "crack" on both the left and the right of the egg, because I thought it would provide more stability. Stitch around the bottom of the egg too.

Pin the top half of the egg to the page, being sure to line up the "crack" with the bottom half of the egg. The top half of the egg is a flap, so you stitch this one a bit differently. I stitched a straight line across the egg, about 1.5 inches (maybe 2) from the top of the egg, and then stitched around the edge of the egg ABOVE that line. So, only a couple of inches of the top-half is actually attached, the remainder of the egg is a flap that you can lift to reveal the baby chick hiding inside.