Baby Play Mats are so cute. So of course my creative brain says “why not DIY my own baby play mat and while we are at it why not make it a quilt!” How hard could it be? Well, Three plus years ago when I was pregnant with Corpus Porpoise (babe # 1), I was inspired to create a Baby Play Mat Quilt like the one Sarah Fielke features called Baby Bunting Play Mat. I was so excited about it. I made sure I had all the supplies and picked out all my favourite printed fabrics for the Bunting. But… Did it get done so that he could play on it?!?! No… of course not. When I was pregnant I had the worst all-day pregnancy sickness. I was so sick that I could barely sit up! And then once he was born, he cried for the first four months, which made me lose my mind and forget about all my plans for being a creative mom. Oh all the ideas I had prior to have babies!! (eye roll) Haha.
So… by the time we found out the gender of our babe, I did feel a little better to sit (second trimester was my best trimester). I made a bunch of blue boy inspired bunting that I planned to put on the DIY Baby Play Mat Quilt. I already had picked out mostly blue boy inspired fabrics because I was convinced that I was going to have a boy. There are no baby girls in my husbands family for 3 generations. So my chances of having a girl were slim and I didn’t want to get my hopes up, so I went with boy themed creations. Good thing I did! So, that was the extent to which I completed the DIY Baby Play Mat Quilt at that time.
Time passed… and I had baby # 2!!! A baby girl this time (Ivy Lynnkins). YAY!! Sooooo exciting to have a girl in this family (finally) and I still had not done anything more to create my Baby Play Mat Quilt. I think she was 6 months old before I finally got my act together and knocked this one out in about 4 nap times.
Nap Timeline with Correlation To Quilt Progress:
First Nap Time: I was inspired by a pair of Ivy’s jammie pants for the background colours so I searched my stash for these colors. Then I made some more girly printed bunting to add to the boy prints I had made years ago. Here are the pants that inspired the background colours. So cute bum Ivy!
Second Nap Time: I organized the bunting layout and sewed them to the strips of backing fabrics.
Third Nap Time: I sewed all the background fabrics with bunting attached to them to each other, which completed the top of the Baby Play Mat Quilt. I also made my quilt sandwich with a super cute pink lion fabric as the backing, and basted it all together.
Fourth Nap Time: I quilted it all together by following the edges where each background colour meets the next colour (super fast and simple quilting on this one). last step I added the a binding that I made from some fabric that I thought looked good with the rest of the quilt.
Once again Corpus Porpoise wanted to be a part of the photo shoot. It always takes me 10 times longer to do anything when the kiddos are around… good thing he’s cute! and I love him so much!!
And there you have it. The 3 year long story of the DIY Baby Play Mat Quilt. I was thinking that this quilt could have many different uses. You could sew crinkly sounding material in some of the bunting for new babies to play with or you could have cute pictures under the buntings to play a matching game as they grow older. My kiddos like finding the different animals on the bunting. Ivy loves to kiss the puppies! Here is her favorite puppy.
I hope that you find inspiration in this DIY Baby Play Mat Quilt and create something similar for your family. My kids currently love to have it laid out on the grass in the back yard and then they roll and giggle on it. I love them silly kids. Until next time, enjoy creating beautiful things!
XO JCL
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P.P.S. Here are the links to the products I use to make my quilts. I love my Brother Sewing Machine, and the quilting batting that I use is awesome too. Check them out by just clicking the photos below.
