A Gift a Day Gift Four: Christmas Picture Book

This is a gift I made for one of my baby nephews.  He's kind of special, more so than normal really in that he's a miracle baby.  See, his mom had tons of issues with her reproductive system and the doctors told her she'd never conceive.  But she did.  Then they told her she'd never make it through the first trimester.  But she did.  Then they told her she'd never be able to carry to term.  But she did.  And today I have my nephew as proof that miracles do, in fact, happen from time to time.

His mom so wanted to have a baby that when he was born I knew that I had to look for a special gift for his first Christmas.  So when I ran across this panel project (I call them that although I'm not sure if that's what they are called.  The projects come in a panel that you buy, usually in a yard or so of fabric and it comes with instructions and everything printed on the fabric itself.  They are pretty cool)  at the used store for 1.50 I had to buy it and make it for him for Christmas.

This is kind of a cool book even compared to other panel projects for me.  Because, for one, this was the best printed panel project I've run into.  All of the lines matched up where they were supposed to, getting the center line down the pages after it was done was easy compared to most I've done and on top of it there was this added coolness you did to the interior pages...

It included panels that you sewed clear vinyl to so that you can fill in the pages with pictures to document the events of the baby's first Christmas.  I thought that was a neat touch and I'm pretty confident that my sister-in-law will actually fill the pages in for her special little guy.

To cut down on costs when I'm making books like this?  I pick up a remnant of fleece at Joanns when they are really cheap or better yet I pick up some remnants of fleece at the used store (I usually pay between .50 and 1.00 for a remnant of fleece at the used store).  It runs cheaper than buying quilt batting for the books and I find it makes the pages more...well normal page thickness compared to quilt batting.  It's also a lot easier to sew through the middle that way (do not use polar fleece though as I think that might be a bit hard to sew through the middle part).

Total Cost of Project:  1.50 for the panel.  I had everything else in my long time fabric stores and thread stash.  The vinyl, funny enough, I had held onto for years and years.  It was maybe the size of a large book cover, but I had it left from a project and didn't want to get rid of it as you never know when vinyl might come in handy.  And hey, I was right.  I had just enough to finish this project :).

Total time to make Project:  About 2 hours.  Cutting and sewing vinyl was a new experience for me (I always used it as like a cover for a table or something before) and it took me a bit to get everything cut and lined up right.