diy quilted playmat.

eloise has a corner of the living room where she can sit & play with her toys. it is nice because it is out of the way of any foot traffic & allows her to have independent playtime. when I first set it up, it was a hodge-podge of thick blankets & her play gym since she was still learning to roll & sit up. I didn’t like the way it looked, so I made something I liked instead!

I knew I wanted something quilted to give eloise some padding on our hardwood floors. I really love hardwood, but when your baby is learning to roll & sit up, it can be brutal! I found this fun playmat on Purl Bee (via Pinterest) & made it slightly larger. I am really happy with the way this playmat turned out, I just wish I would have made it sooner!

{via Purl Bee}

supplies:

fabric (I bought two yards of Clay Sundot & Triangle Tokens Medallion from Etsy. both are part of the Arizona Collection by Amy Rhodes.)
thread (I used white)
contrasting thread for quilting (I used navy blue and yellow)
quilt batting
scissors
needle
optional: small square of white fabric & embroidery floss for name tag

{sidenote: I apologize for the iphone quality pictures. I did this project in tandem with my chair & needed the SD card in my computer (rather than in the camera) so that I could see how the pieces went back on. I guess that’s the problem with multi-tasking!}

I (mostly) followed the directions on the Purl Bee post, but added an extra set of four squares (so my finished quilt was six squares on each side rather than four).

first I cut out all 12 squares. I typically have issues with the cutting part of sewing projects, but squares are nice because you can cut two sides & then fold it in half & then cut the remaining sides.

then I pinned & sewed two sets of squares together (one of each fabric) & then sewed three sets together (to make two sets of six). the seam allowances for this project were really small (in my opinion) & I wish I would have followed my gut & made them bigger from the beginning. I was worried about it the entire time, & lo & behold, I had two places on the quilt where I didn’t quite catch enough fabric & have to handstitch the area closed… oh well!

I didn’t get a picture of this part, but then I made the quilt batting “sandwich” where you layer the fabric right-sides together on top of the quilt batting. then you sew around the entire perimeter, leaving a few inches to reverse the fabric right-side out. then you sew the hole shut by hand. I normally would top-stitch something like this to give it a nicer finish, but I didn’t think I could do a good enough job going thru the batting.

next it is time to quilt! I chose contrasting thread colors like in the original post. since I didn’t use exactly the same fabric though, I had to make up my own way to quilt the shapes. I had though thought about this when I bought the fabric, making sure I ended up with two patterns that would lend themselves to this type of quilting.

once I got started, I found that it was easiest to pin all around the area I was quilting to keep the fabric & batting from moving around.

on the Clay Sundot fabric (peach) I quilted a quarter circle with navy thread. you can see what it looks like on the backside of the quilt too.

on the Triangle Token Medallion fabric (mint green) I quilted some of the gold triangles with yellow thread. you can (sort of) see what it looks like on the backside. I followed the advice to have some quilting at least every eight inches in order to keep the batting in place. for each square, I quilted the first shape & then measured out eight inches or so to pick the remainder of the quilted shapes.

and the finished product! I really LOVE how this turned out & that I was able to choose fabric that was fun, but not too juvenile. it coordinates (sort of) with our living space & hopefully it will be a quilt eloise can use for years. I especially adore the embroidered name tag – a fun last-minute addition! (I just cut out two smallish rectangles of white cotton muslin that I had leftover from the chair project & ironed them flat. then I lightly traced out the letters spelling “eloise” before hand embroidering along the penciled lines. I stacked the second cotton muslin piece behind the embroidered one before hand sewing it onto the corner of the back of the quilt.)