More on Play Mats

I found the fabric for the play mats at Joann's Fabric store. I found Lil Bit's fabric in the home decor section and it is a heavier fabric. The fabric for my friend's play mat came from the Juvenile Clothing section. This section has a lot of coordinating fabrics and is a little heavier than the typical calico prints. I bought 1 1/2 yards of each fabric and batting large enough to make the mats. I think I got batting big enough for a twin bed. I have a fair amount left over. The binding is double fold quilt binding. They have all kinds of colors and I found it by the thread.

First, I pinned all of the fabric together. I used my wooden yardstick to help make the circular pattern. I drilled a tiny hole in the yardstick at 21 inches and put a pin through it and the middle of the fabric into some cardboard that we had in the garage. I then took my pencil and held it at the end of the yardstick and spun the yardstick around the pin and drew a circle onto the fabric. I then cut all 4 pieces of fabric at the same time. I used the cut out fabric as a template to cut out the batting.

Next, I pinned the batting and one of the fabrics together (Bit's floral print and batting) and ironed them together. Oh yeah...I used fusible batting. Make sure to follow the directions on how to fuse batting and ONE fabric. Then, I tacked them together using design elements of the fabric. I tried to highlight them in the pics below.

Can you see the stitches running down the "vein" of the green leaf?
You might not be able to see the stitches, but you can tell it's tacked down.
I did that all over the fabric to keep the batting and fabric together.

Same thing here.
The stitches run along the left side of the yellow leaf.


Next, I ironed the other fabric (green zebra stripe) to the other side of the batting and then pinned it in place. I then followed these instructions on how to sew on the double fold quilt binding (I had to sew 2 packages of quilt binding together to fit around my circles). I have no idea if this is the correct way to sew on quilt binding, but it's what I did. :) Oh, in the tutorial, she doesn't pin the binding on, but I did.

I should have taken pictures of the steps along the way. I hope this makes sense!


Viola! You now have a super cute play mat.

Side note: It would be best if you could tack both fabrics to the batting. I also saw at Hancock fabrics where they had some reversible quilted fabric for sale. They had some really cool prints. All you would have to do is cut out the circles and put on the binding. It's already quilted!
But, I don't think you'd be able to embroider it, b/c it would show through to the other side.

If you have more questions, I'll be glad to answer them!
I'd love to be able to sell them one day. I need to practice a little more though.

St. Patty's Day

With names like G and M, we're definitely embracing our Irish ancestry in this house! We had a great play group at the park this morning. Boo played soooooo hard trying to keep up with the the bigger boys. He was worn slap out afterwards. He wants you all to know that he also went potty in the woods. He was riding his trike on the trails as I walked and he said he needed to potty. So, he went for the first time standing up! haha! He's gonna love this post when he's older.

Bit would have you know that she has found her feet and that she rolled over back to tummy twice!

Kiss me, I'm Irish!


Her onesie is covered in little shamrocks.
I bought this onesie in Ireland when I was prego with Boo.

He wore it for his first St Patty's Day too.
He was only 15 days old.


"Look, I have toes!"

"There they are again!"

"I wonder if I can get them in my mouth!"

Oh yeah, is it St. Patty's Day or St. Paddy's Day?

B-mama, I'm going to post play mat instructions soon.

Play Mats

As if I don't have a million things to do to get ready to move to AK (like purge, purge, purge this house) I recently found myself at the fabric store looking for fabric to make a play mat for Lil Bit. My friend C has one (given to her by a friend of hers) and I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and thought, I can do that! And why stop at one? I'll make two: one for a friend who's expecting and one for myself, er, I mean Lil Bit. lol.

What is a play mat, you ask? Just a fancy place for babies to do tummy time. It has a front and back with a layer of batting in the middle to provide a tiny bit of cushion and it makes it just thick enough so that the babies don't end up with it bunched up in their mouth, which is what happens when you put them down on blankets.

So, I picked out some coordinating fabrics and went to work. I'm soooooo happy at how they turned out!

This is the front of Bit's


I had her name embroidered on it.

This is the back.

With an "m".

I had some left over fabric, so I made some burp cloths too.
There's terry cloth on the back.


This is the one I made for my friend in Arkansas who is having a boy this summer.

The front!

I intended to have his name embroidered on this side, but I messed up the order.

The back.

With his name.

...and burp cloths.

Inspected by this little gal.
She approves.

So, what do you think?

UPDATE: Lil Bit's cranial vault measurements have improved by 5mm since we started PT! So instead of there being a 12mm difference between the right and left sides, there's only a 7mm difference. Yahoo!!!! And she's getting stronger everyday.

A FUNNY:

We had our overseas medical screening yesterday for our move to Alaska, which is considered overseas. When we go to the hospital and have to wait around a lot, we let Boo watch "Jack's Big Music Show" on our iPod. Yesterday was no different. He was still watching the show when we got back to the car. On our way to our next appt, he kept saying, "I need help." And I told him he'd have to wait because I was driving. We arrived at our destination and met up with B-man. Boo starting asking for help again. So, B-man took the iPod from him to see what the problem was and immediately started laughing. Turns out, the little guy had managed to change it off of Jack and was instead jammin' to Bon Jovi's WANTED Dead or Alive. Can't you just picture him in his car seat with the headphones on listening to Bon Jovi as he looked out the window? We got a good laugh out of that one.

SeaWorld Adventure

Yesterday was our big birthday adventure to SeaWorld. Military families get free tickets once/year through the Anheuser-Busch Here's to the Heroes program. So, we've enjoyed three free trips to SeaWorld since moving to TX. Because are able to get in free, we've splurged on a couple of extras that we probably wouldn't have done had we paid for admission into the park. Our first year, I did the Beluga Whale Interaction for my birthday! It was so much fun! And this year, for Boo's birthday, we signed up to have breakfast with Elmo and his friends. We had a GREAT day! Boo was so excited and so well behaved. Lil Bit did well too. I know there are a lot of pics, but consider yourself lucky that I didn't post all 200 of them!

This is his face as we walked into Rosita's restaurant and he saw the Sesame Street gang.

He took his picture right away with Elmo.
He kept making this silly grin when it was time to pose with the characters.
He was very excited and kept asking to go see them but then kind of got shy and nervous when he would stand next to them.

Zoe!


Cookie Monster!

Abby Cadabby!

Lil Bit wanted to see Elmo too.

The BIG guy!

Giving ole Bert a 'high-five'!

After breakfast, which was delicious by the way, the rest of the park had opened and we went to the new Sesame Bay of Play area to ride rides!

He LOVES to ride!

At three years old and the required 38" tall (with shoes on and hair sticking up), he was JUST tall enough to ride the Shamu Express roller coaster with Daddy.

Did I mention that he loves rides??

Standing in line with mama.

Thrill-seeker! Ha!

While Boo rode, Bit slept...

...and blew bubbles.

After riding rides, we stopped to watch the guys from Sesame Street perform a song and dance routine.
Compare to this favorite photo from Boo's first year.


We've seen the Shamu show, Believe, several times now but had not been to the Beluga whale and dolphin show (Azul) before. So, we decided to check it out.

Showtime!

Bit enjoyed snuggling with Daddy.

My Beluga buddies!

Dolphins!

This show had some acrobatics as well...

After the Azul show, we headed over to Dolphin Cove for dolphin feeding time.

Surprise!

He loved this too!

He was ready to try on his own after I showed him what to do a few times.

It really was a great day and a great birthday celebration for our big three year old! He loved every minute of it and we did too. We had great Spring weather too.
Happy Birthday Boo!

Oh yeah, Boo also kept his underoos dry ALLLLLLLL day! Hooray!