I’d been eyeing this Michael Miller playmat with a tutorial by jcaroline for some time, and then had also happened across this tutorial of a felt traveling race track book in some of my blog-searching, and decided to combine the two! The original playmat was way too big for my purposes, but the fabric was too cute not to use.
I had bought 1.25 yds of the fabric a little while ago from my local quilt shop, but push came to shove when I knew I would be attending the birthday party of a car-loving 4-year-old boy.
And so I created my own!
You might not notice at first, but it has velcro on the corners so it can be folded up, and of course handles to carry. And look, pockets to carry 3 cars!
The pockets also have velcro so the cars won’t fall out when little kids are toting it about. And even more velcro on the top of this so it can be folded again, and then Look! A nice personalized totable car playmat:
Here’s just a couple notes on the making of it:
*This is not the full 1.25 yds! I cut the piece into quarters so I have enough to make 3 more – one for my daughters to share (don’t really know what I’ll personalize it with since it will be shared), one for another boy celebrating a birthday in October, and one to keep for a future present. I thought this was a good size to get a good roadway for each playmat. But, um, I don’t remember the exact measurements. (I’ll look it up if you want to know.)
*I personalized it before creating the quilt sandwich so I could stitch the letters down without it showing through to the front. My letters weren’t nearly as neat as on the prior post’s pillow because I simply freehanded them.
*The pockets however were added after I quilted the playmat because otherwise the quilting would have closed the pockets. That stitching does show through to the front, but I don’t think it’s too distracting.
*I made it with the “birthing” method so I wouldn’t have to bind it.
If you want further directions, let me know and I’ll detail it out some more.
I understand the recipient loves his very own roadway. Can’t you just see some kids zooming their cars along?
ZZZZZZZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!
Filed under: Crafting |
I'm nanann! I am a 30-something mom to 2 beautiful girls (6 and 4) living in Austin, Texas. I LOVE quilting and have recently taken up sewing clothes since it is just too much fun to do for my girls. This blog is a little bit about my quilting (or making of “woogies” as they’re known in my household) and other crafts, and a little bit about my two girls.
Nanann's Woogies & Whatnots 
[…] Back when I first started this blog (I know, as if that was years ago), I posted about a Traveling Car Playmat that I made for a little boy’s birthday. I had intended to immediately get busy and finish […]
This is fantastic and so inspiring. I found the out of print fabric and snatched up 3 yards to make several of these (and a stroller quilt or 2). One question, how does is fold? I’m having trouble figuring out the pockets and handles.
So sorry for the late response! My e-mail decided to put all my blog comments in the spam folder and I just found several! I’m answering this in the comments too so maybe it’ll help anyone else with the same questions.
Let’s see if I can answer these questions for you.
How it folds: I have it so that the bottom folds up to the top, and then you fold the sides in. I don’t know if that makes sense. Essentially, I wanted it to be only able to fold one way so the pockets would end up on the inside every time. If you do the velcro male, female, male, female going around the 4 corners, than it can be folded any which way which would be a mess. So instead I put 2 male velcros in the top 2 corners and 2 female velcros in the bottom 2 corners.
Putting in handles: As stated, I used the “birthing” method instead of adding binding. Essentially, I layered the solid fabric, batting, handles with the handles going to the inside instead of the outside, and the car fabric wrong side facing up. You don’t put the handles in the middle! Instead, you center them on the top half of the panel. Stitch ALL the way around everything except for 3 or 4 inches, being sure to reinforce — stitch several times — over the handles and of course backstitch on either side of the opening.
Then you turn everything out of the 3-4 inch opening and the handles will be facing out appropriately as well as the fabric. You can go ahead and stitch the opening closed and then do some quilting to hold everything in place. I quilted along the roads.
Pockets: The pockets were the last thing I did because I didn’t want to quilt them closed! You’ll have to play around with the size a bit because I don’t remember exactly, but take a long rectangle and hem all 4 sides up nice and neat. Now you can fold up your car mat to see exactly where you want the placement on the inside. Pin in some pleats on the bottom to make spacey pockets. I think I discovered doing 2 pockets was better than 3 — we could actually fit more cars into 2 large pockets vs. 3 small pockets. I put velcro on both the pocket top hem and on the car mat, and sewed the pockets down on the sides, bottom, and a middle line.
Okay, I think I answered your questions — hopefully it wasn’t too late! Let me know if you have any further questions and I’ll try to clarify some more and maybe add some pictures explaining!
Thanks for stopping by and for the great compliments!
by the way, here is a post about another 3 I had made later, and you can see just the 2 pockets instead of 3 pockets, and maybe you can make out the pleating on the bottom:
On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 2:29 PM, nanann wrote:
> So sorry for the late response! My e-mail decided to put all my blog > comments in the spam folder and I just found several! I’m answering this in > the comments too so maybe it’ll help anyone else with the same questions. > > Let’s see if I can answer these questions for you. > > How it folds: > I have it so that the bottom folds up to the top, and then you fold the > sides in. I don’t know if that makes sense. Essentially, I wanted it to be > only able to fold one way so the pockets would end up on the inside every > time. If you do the velcro male, female, male, female going around the 4 > corners, than it can be folded any which way which would be a mess. So > instead I put 2 male velcros in the top 2 corners and 2 female velcros in > the bottom 2 corners. > > Putting in handles: > As stated, I used the “birthing” method instead of adding binding. > Essentially, I layered the solid fabric, batting, handles with the handles > going to the inside instead of the outside, and the car fabric wrong side > facing up. You don’t put the handles in the middle! Instead, you center > them on the top half of the panel. Stitch ALL the way around everything > except for 3 or 4 inches, being sure to reinforce — stitch several times — > over the handles and of course backstitch on either side of the opening. > > Then you turn everything out of the 3-4 inch opening and the handles will > be facing out appropriately as well as the fabric. You can go ahead and > stitch the opening closed and then do some quilting to hold everything in > place. I quilted along the roads. > > Pockets: > The pockets were the last thing I did because I didn’t want to quilt them > closed! You’ll have to play around with the size a bit because I don’t > remember exactly, but take a long rectangle and hem all 4 sides up nice and > neat. Now you can fold up your car mat to see exactly where you want the > placement on the inside. Pin in some pleats on the bottom to make spacey > pockets. I think I discovered doing 2 pockets was better than 3 — we could > actually fit more cars into 2 large pockets vs. 3 small pockets. I put > velcro on both the pocket top hem and on the car mat, and sewed the pockets > down on the sides, bottom, and a middle line. > > Okay, I think I answered your questions — hopefully it wasn’t too late! > Let me know if you have any further questions and I’ll try to clarify some > more and maybe add some pictures explaining! > > Thanks for stopping by and for the great compliments! > >
Thanks so much for clarifying the details. This really does help. I’ll be making three of these starting tomorrow for three lucky little boys. Fingers crossed!
So…I made two of these. Great tutorial and the clarification really helped out. Here’s my photo of the finished objects.