The year of the horse {Lydia’s playmat}

Since horsies are pretty much the pies de resistance for our girlie this year, I’m super excited about Lydia’s gold gift. I had so much fun putting this gift together that I’m tempted every afternoon to play with it myself.

I’m seriously wanting to rip that plastic wrapper right off that Melissa & Doug’s Fold & Go Stable and start playing. Would that be weird?

It was so easy and fun to make. Wanna make your own farm playmat?

I started by scouting out some fun blue, green, and brown fabrics from the fabric store with some help from Ashlyn. She found some very cool material for the backing of the mat that looked very field and fairyish, so I splurged on a full yard of that one. All the other pieces we liked, I got 3/8 yard of. I also picked up 4 yards of Wonder Under, an iron-on paper-back adhesive for fabric so that we could place the fabric on the mat like puzzle pieces and iron them on.

I found an old fitted sheet at home to use to secure the fabric to. I just cut off the elastic and cut it down to be the same size as our fairyish backing piece.

I sorta sketched out what I envisioned for the mat–as you can tell, the final mat turned out slightly different. But, I wanted to have some sort of drawing to follow since I wasn’t working from a pattern (and I’m more of a pattern type of girl than a freethinker).

I ironed the Wonder Under onto the fabric pieces we were using and then cut them out (in that order so that the material wouldn’t fray when I cut curves and all), laying them out on the sheet and playing around with where I wanted them to overlap. I started with the brown because I wanted the stable to be able to open up fully on the brown to look like dirt.

I just layered the fabric on fabric until I got the look I wanted, ironing as I went to secure each piece.

I went back to that fun backing we had and laid it out again right side to right side of the playmat to trim them down to be the same exact size. It was off a little here and there.

Grabbing a scrap, I played around with the zig zag stitching of my machine until I found one that I liked. Then, I started stitching around every seam, everywhere the fabrics lined up, using colors that coordinated (green to edge all the grassy areas, brown to edge the dirt, and blue to edge the water), going in order so that the “top” pieces would be outlined last (like the rocks outlined in grey rather than blue). I did make the zig zag stitch closer together for the rocks just to give a different look–I was shooting for the look of the water washing up onto the rocks. Don’t know if it really looks like that or not. But, I liked the look regardless.

Using a normal straight stitch, I then sewed the backing to the playmat, right side to right side, leaving a corner open to turn it inside out again. Then, I ironed it really well to get a crisp edge. I decided I wanted to give it a bit of a more finished edge. So, using green thread, I did a straight stitch all around the edge about 1/4″ in (just the width of the foot on the machine). I didn’t even bother to handstitch that opening I left since I ironed it really well and did that finishing stitch. Why bother handstitching it? No need for more work.

And, then I set it all up complete with some horsies and clapped my hands all my myself. (Okay, I may have texted my husband with some pictures in an effort to get some applause from him too.)

What’s super cool is that it can be used for other stuff too. The back can be used for fairy play maybe. And, it even looks really cute with the handmade fabric nativity I picked up at a yard sale last summer for $1.