A Playmat

Ok so I have been mildly obsessed with Pinterest as of late and because of this obsession and a lot of free time on my hands (how on earth do I have free time with two kids?? I'm not sure, but I do) I have been enjoying some craftiness. One of my pins was for this quilt pattern. I am a huge fan of the Yellow Brick Road pattern and so anything that is similar is fun too. I decided to give this a try because what I really wanted to try was to make a playmat - which basically is a quilt with little tags sewn into it allowing toys to be attached. I highly doubt this is a novel idea, but I 'came up with it' on my own.


I had some fabric that I had been wanting to use now for sometime, that my friend Stacy had give to me and Mae seemed like the ideal person to use it on and that it would make a fun bright play area for her. The pattern was extremely easy, for the back I used the last of the fat quarters that came with the cherry set and then I used up the remainder of a green fabric that I had that complimented it nicely. I was extremely limited on the green and having almost exactly the right amount without any extra cutting that is why the back has a more 'modern' look to it.


This was the first quilt that I chose to do free motion quilting on. I'm normally a stitch-in-the-ditch kinda gal, because I'm petrified of ruining a quilt top that I spent a long amount of time on, ruining a present, or pretty fabric... and since this was for Mae and I have a new machine that is amazing I figured the chances of ruining my pretty fabric were very slim and so I decided to go for it. And not having a free motion quilting foot on my machine (still need to purchase that), I think it turned out great! It's not perfect there are a few spots of puckering and pulling, but overall it turned out great. We'll see how it does after a wash or two. :)


To finish it up I used a dvd (a netflix one... hehe) to round the corners and then I pinned some double wide bias tape and sewed that onto the mat. I am absolutely horrible at a blind stitch. I don't know if I have the technique wrong, no patience or a combo of the two - but I have never been good at it and I have zero desire to exercise 'practice makes perfect.' I am perfectly content having a top stitch or two on my boarder of my quilts. :) And that's what I did (it's a lot faster that way too!)

And wa la! I was done. It took one afternoon of cutting while the kids played (maybe about an hour worth of work spred over 90 minutes), Ace helped me lay out the pattern before dinner that night, and another hour of sewing the quilt top after they went to bed. A few days later I took another 2 hours to sew the back, quilt, and bind. Mae is certainly happy with the results and I am too. :)