the quilt that entertains your kids: an eye-spy tutorial

An eye-spy quilt is simply a design that features a large range of novelty prints, from animals to vehicles, people to plants -- anything that can be "spotted". For this latest quilt, though, I decided to take the game one step further and make a physical, hold-in-your-hand checklist of some of the quilt's landmark prints.



In case you'd like to use the idea for your next eye-spy quilt, too, here's how I put mine together.

Materials:
Several squares of novelty fabrics to be used in the quilt
Printer paper
A scanner
Laminating supplies (optional)

What to do:
1. Place your fabric squares in the scanner, face down. Scan each one, and save them on your computer.



2. Open Pages (or your word processing program of choice). Create a new blank document.

3. Drag in each of your scanned fabric images. I chose to lay them out in a grid, but it would also work to have them positioned vertically, like a list.

(Tip: In Pages, you can add one image, and then save your document as a template. Close and reopen your document. Duplicate the first image as many times as necessary, and then drag each subsequent image onto one of the duplicates. This makes each image the same exact size. You might know an easier way to do this already, though...!)



4. (Optional) Add a textbox under each image, with a description of the fabric.

5. Print. I chose to laminate the sheets, so that the images can be crossed off with a dry-erase marker when found, and then the sheets can be wiped clean and reused.

Perfect for rainy-day or sick-in-bed entertainment!