Felt Fire Station – Cover

This fire station project is a full stand-alone quiet book, just like the dollhouse book, but using full size 9″ x 12″ sheets of felt for each page. The fire fighters are made from the same pattern as the dollhouse dolls, so they will be interchangeable. To see the other sections of the project, go here: Felt Fire Station – Fire Truck & Dalmatian, Felt Fire Station – Garage & Locker Room, Felt Fire Station – Kitchen and Felt Fire Station – Office & Bedroom.

This tutorial is for the cover and assembly. I had to sew my book together as I went in order to have better pictures for the blog. I’ll do my best to explain!

What I Used:

• The Pattern
• Felt from American Felt & Craft (in beet [2 full sheet plus extra], leather, banana cream pie, elephant, big apple, doe, sparrow and gray.)
• Additional Felt Scraps (in cilantro, pink tutu, orange juice, chocolate, and pastry.)
• Clear Vinyl
• Snag-Free Velcro (in white)
• Black Sew-On Velcro (I used 1 loop coin)
• Sew-on Snap
• 5/8″ Yellow Ribbon (Or felt strips. I used gold twill ribbon.)
• 1/8″ Wide Ribbon Scrap (in gray)
• Mini Ric Rac (in olive)

To prep your interior pages, sew each set of facing pages together at the middle seam. I just put right sides together and used a blanket stitch. You will have these sets: garage/locker room and the kitchen/office (with the bedroom already sewn to the top of the office.) You then pin the locker room and kitchen together, wrong sides faceing, and sew around 3 sides (leaving the binding edge open for later.) It will look like an accordion of pages at this point.

I started by sewing everything that goes on the front an back cover to the beet (burgundy) felt sheets and the leather (brown) roof.

Front Exterior: I pinned the garage door in place with strips of ribbon tucked under the sides. I sewed the ribbons down, then sewed around the sides and top of the garage. I sewed the door down beside the garage, leaving space to the right for a piece of snag-free Velcro. I sewed the door emblem onto the upper window, then sewed both windows down. I finished the door by sewing down the handle.

I added 4 pieces of snag-free Velcro to the front, as shown in the above picture. Line it up with 3 matching pieces of Velcro on the top of the bedroom (add those now if you didn’t already.) At this point, you can sew the front exterior to the garage (wrong sides facing). Sewed 3 sides, leaving the spine open for later. (I sewed all 4 sides then had to sew on top of my stitches when sewing the binding closed.)

Back Exterior:

Hydrant: I sewed the fire hydrant down on the far right and sewed a black Velcro dot (loop side so the hook on the hose can attach) to it.

Sunflower: For the sunflower, I made a zigzag stitch that went across the ric rac stem, then added some leaves by stitching a line up the centers. I pinned the flower and flower center in place and sewed around the center, leaving the petals loose.

Dog House: I pinned the two layers of the red dog house together and sewed around the door. I pinned the roof in place and sewed them together along the bottom of the roof. I pinned the doghouse in place on the page, and sewed around the sides and top. This makes a nice pocket for the puppy to go into.

Grill: For the grill, I pinned the grilling surface to the grill body then made long stitches for the grill bars. I made tiny stitches at the end of each long stitch to hold everything tight. I pinned the grill to the page, sewed the top down, and laid the clear vinyl pocket in place. I sewed along the bottom of the pocket, then added a sew-on snap just under it. I sewed around the sides of the grill, making sure to catch the sides of the pocket in my stitches.

For the lid, I sewed a matching snap to one side, then sewed the front and back together with a ribbon handle stretched across and tucked between the layers at each end. I pinned the lid to the page with it already open, and sewed it to the page. Sewing it down while it is open helps it stay open on its own while you are playing.

Hotdogs & Hamburgers: (Veggie dogs and Gardenburgers for us!) Fold each hotdog lengthwise and sew around the edges. Place each one in the center of a bun. Wrap the bun up around the hotdogs and make small stitched through all layers along the length of the hotdog to hold them together. For the hamburgers, stitch tiny sesame seeds to the outside of the top of the bun. Place each patty on the inside of the bottom of each bun, fold over the tops, then make a few tiny stitches to hold them closed.

Side Strap: Sew some snag-free Velcro on to one side that matches the Velcro by the front door, then sew the two sides together.

Roof: Sew the roof emblem to the center bottom of the roof, as shown above.

Pin the back exterior to the office (wrong sides facing) with the side strap caught in the side (Velcro on the interior side). Briefly pin the roof to the bedroom, aligning it to the top (wrong sides facing) to find where it needs to be sewn to the back exterior. Unpin the roof from the bedroom and sew the bottom edge down to the back exterior. Pin the roof back in place and sew the back exterior and roof to the office/bedroom, taking care not to sew the bedroom floor flap when you go past it on each side.

At this point, the book is all sewn together except the side binding is open. With the roof flap open, Sew through all the layers of the book to close the binding. I used a blanket stitch, and used floss that matched the roof to start with, then switched to floss to match the walls.

I didn’t pin mine, as it was so thick. I just went slowly and pinched the layers close and all lined up as I went. Excuse the phone photos here. Jax was napping on my lap and I used his lap as my sewing table. Shh, don’t tell him!

As you can see, the edges came together nicely. This quiet book actually isn’t as thick as I expected it would be all finished.

This is a view of the bottom edge of the book.

Here is a view of the right side. I matched my threads to the exterior (roof and brick colors) when sewing the pages together. But that is just personal preference. I like the clean look on the outside. Since the interior rooms are already busy, the contrasting floss around the edges isn’t really noticeable.

Stay tuned for an fun add-on pattern to be released soon, because firefighters need to have fires to put out! I hope you had fun visiting our little fire station quiet book! Jax will be bringing this along on our week-long vacation in California. We are renting part of a Spanish bungalow so he won’t have any toys but what I bring him.

Are you making the fire station from my pattern? I’d love to see! Email me photos, or stop by the Facebook page to share!

Come back soon!