I am helping a friend from my exchange finish her quiet book, and we are binding this one without so much edge binding, and this time we used buttonholes. I think it is much more doable for people who do not have a thousand yards of leftover quilt binding to use up, as well as vast patience for binding.  Since this method is easier than my first one, I thought I would share.

Here you can see that there is not much difference in the general appearance between this one and mine. The main differences are the pages. We put them right sides together, sewed around the edges, and clipped the corners, leaving an opening.

Then we turned the pages inside out, ironed the edges, and sewed up the opening.

Rather than the lengthy and troublesome grommet application, we marked and sewed buttonholes on these pages. My Bernina 230 PE, to which I may or may not have written a love letter at one point, has a function where I have to push the reverse button one time to show the machine the buttonhole length I want, and then it is programmed to repeat that exact buttonhole as many times as I want until I clear it. Oh Bernie, I love you.

This is the result:

We are still about a week away from total completion. I quilted the cover, added the strips to hold our rings, and traced the Quiet Book letters today, and next week we will iron them on and finish binding the outside. I am excited for hers to be complete. It is so fun to see how an identical exchange can result in books that are similar but different, almost like sister books.

I visited another friend today who is doing an exchange, and she had some fabulous pages. I wish I had my camera there. My favorite was probably the barrel of monkeys, with monkeys that hook arms cut out of craft foam. She also had a simple mitten page that reminded me of my childhood. It’s so fun to see these. They take me back to my childhood and I just want to play with them myself.