Play Mat

Another project I did in June is this play mat. I got the front fabric on etsy. The back fabric is from fabric.com, and the middle layer is some Quilters Dream batting (here). I discovered that my grandmothers sewing machine closet (which I inherited and adore) not only has a collection of tons of random buttons, thread, zippers, bias tape, etc, but it also has every presser foot accessory I know of (which isn't really saying a lot..but it also had a lot I don't know of too!). One of which is an even feed / walking foot which is super helpful for machine quilting.

I used safety pins to baste the layers together (after prewashing the the outer layers. The batting layer instructions said not to prewash. I forget why). Then I used the walking foot to sew along the edges of the roads and the airport landing strip. It didn't do a perfect job, (there is a bit of pucker in some spots) but we'll just blame that on my minimal basting and not my grandmothers awesome machine! I used biased tape to finish the edges. I realized that I should have purchased regular width double biased tape instead of quilting biased tape because the tape was wider than I needed. I think the quilting tape is for super fat quilts. Mine was not fat. But other than that, this was great!

Now Ila can play on it with her cars. Or she will someday anyway.