Baby mat

The First Project -

The madness all started when I was asked, while still pregnant, if I had made anything for my baby. I got a case of the guilts and decided that I could make a floor mat and started working on designs. I had thought about doing block colours in a pattern but finally settled on doing a picture with different textured fabrics.

I started with a lot of newspaper and drew out the items I wanted:
sun - yellow cotton
cloud - white fur
pond - blue linenboat - black cotton and red satin for the sail
sheep - white fur
grassy area - green flannelette
butterfly - orange felt

I admit I used some images from the net... I'm not that good at drawing sheep.

After cutting each of these out from the fabrics I laid them out on a large piece of calico (pre-washed of course), about 1metre x 1metre. I also placed a piece of batting under the calico to make it soft for the baby to lie on. I sewed each of the items on to the calico through the batting as well to keep it all in place.

This is the mat before sewing it all together

For the back I used a piece of dark blue calico with another piece of batting (my baby would be lying on a cloud). Sewed up both pieces, right sides together, turned in the right way (no easy task) and hand sewed the hole shut.

It turned out quite well, wasn't too big and got used a lot in the early days. If I made another one I would finish the edges of the items better before sewing them down, or maybe iron on some interface to reinforce the edges. The flannelette edges have come away a bit where they they were pushed on by baby feet.

The mat showing the blue backing

The finished mat