DIY Quilted Baby Playmat

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I sewed up this easy baby playmat over the last couple days and I want to tell you about how I made it. Such a practical project, I throw this mat down in whatever room I’m in and let baby kick around on in. You can make it as thick or thin as you like, and I even made one side of mine using a water resistant material so I can use it outside in the grass as well.

I wanted to make this project using things I already had around the house, and besides the thread it is completely made out of recycled materials! The raspberry printed flannel is actually cut from an old sheet, and the ‘batting’ is two layers of a throw blanket that I’ve owned for over a decade and I was about to get rid of. The green checkerboard side is pieced together using a rain coat I cut up. I bought the rain coat last year from the thrift store and when I wore it in the rain last week I quickly learned it was not very waterproof! I felt bad even donating it back to the thrift store because I didn’t want anyone else spending their money on it and getting tricked. So I cut it up into as many 3.5” squares as I could and pieced those squares into a big rectangle. This way I could use as much of the coat as possible, cutting squares from the sleeves, pockets, and hood. I even harvested the zipper to use in another project in the future. The way I was able to make the checkerboard design was by flipping half of the squares upside down. The backside of the fabric was slightly darker then the front side and I wanted to make use of that in the design.

The binding of this play mat is made from cotton jersey. I am working on an Alabama Chanin style dress and had some leftover jersey fabric after cutting out the pattern pieces. I cut 3.5” strips on the cross grain and pieced them together to make one long strip, which I attached the same way you would attach regular binding to a quilt. I love that it is a little softer than using quilting cotton. I cut such a wide strip because I wanted a nice thick border around the play mat, I think the green compliments both sides nicely.

As for quilting: I did attempt to quilt this in my sewing machine and it was such a failure! I wanted this mat to be nice and thick so there is no way I could get it through my machine, even using a walking foot. So instead I used the knotted method of quilting, which is to use thread to tie a knot through all of the layers of the quilt at regular intervals. You can see the tails of the knots on one side of the quilt so I chose to have them on the water resistant piecework side, in between each square of the checkerboard. I used a cotton Sashiko thread (affiliate link) to tie my knots. I think this method works so well for a play mat! The knots are a cute design feature, it works well on extra thick quilts, and it is so quick to do.

You can of course make this playmat any size you like! The size of mine was completely based on the blanket and fabric I had available to use. For reference mine measures 27” x 32”. I recommend cutting your top piece to the size you want your mat, and then if you can, cut your batting/blanket and your backing fabric a little bigger. Things will shift around a little bit as you tie the layers together, so it’s nice to have some extra room for that. Then, before binding, you can trim the batting and backing fabric down so that the edges all line up perfectly. Then add your desired binding! The knotting method of quilting makes this project so easy, and it’s such a great way to use up fabric you already have!

A Quilted Fanny Pack from Scraps

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My first big project post-baby is finished! I have seen so many bags and coats around Instagram made from recycled old quilts and I love the look. I always check the thift store bedding section for pretty quilts that have seen better days but I never really find anything in colours that I like, so I decided to do my own piecework and quilting to make this project. And I think it’s giving vintage vibes! It was also a great project to use up leftover scraps I had in my stash.

I was so motivated to get this project finished quickly because I felt like it would fit so perfectly into my life as a new Mom. I just had my first baby and getting out of the house each day has been so important for my sanity. The only thing that holds me back when my husband isn’t home is that we live in a walk-up apartment, a.k.a. no elevator to get the stroller downstairs! So I have been getting comfortable with baby-wearing, and I thought how great would it be to make going on a walk completely hands free with a wearable diaper bag. So this fanny pack is designed to be my essential diaper bag for short walks around the neighbourhood. It doesn’t have room for everything our main diaper bag has packed, but it fits a couple diapers, wipes, a nursing cover, and a spit cloth. I feel pretty good leaving for a couple hours with the baby and the pup knowing I have the basics packed.

I designed the pattern for the fanny pack (also sometimes called a bum bag, cute!) myself. I planned for a bag that was a little bigger than most fanny packs to comfortably fit the diapers and wipes. I tried to be so meticulous when making the pattern but in the end my numbers were off and I had to sort of fudge it anyways. The bag ended up being an inch shorter then planned, but it still fits what I need it to. Kudo’s to all those bag pattern designers out there! Getting it perfect is tough.

I won’t be sharing the pattern because like I mentioned the numbers weren’t quite right, but I’ll share the basic process I used and you could probably use this process with another fanny pack pattern. For each pattern piece I cut three pieces: an outer piece, a batting piece, and a lining piece. For the front and side pieces I used a quilt block pattern, and then cut the finished piecework down to size. The quilt block pattern I used is called the honeymoon square, and you can find free instructions for it here. After cutting the three pieces out I would make a quilt sandwich and use a simple running stitch with thicker thread to hand quilt them together. Going back I would make each piece slightly bigger then needed and then trim them down to size after quilting, because the quilting scews the pieces a little. I also wish I would have added a layer of interfacing to each quilt sandwich, to give the bag a bit more structure. A note on the zippers: I inserted these in the usual way before making the quilt sandwich for that correponding piece. Once I had all my quilt sandwiches ready I assembled the bag, and finished the seams on the inside with some colourful binding. I love the inside of this bag just as much as the outside because of this beautiful finish!

The bag was made completely with things I had in my stash so I don’t have too many links for you. The fabric is mostly linen scraps I had from Maiwa, some of it naturally dyed by me for earlier projects. The floral fabric is a Liberty Tana Lawn I have lined up for another project, so I snuck a little bit from that. The cotton quilt batting (affiliate link) was extra from my Tamarack jacket project (a 2017 project!). As for the hardware I had the zippers, webbing, and buckle in my stash. I usually pick these types of things up from Dressew, which is a sewing store in my city.

This was the absolute perfect first project for me, as it has fit right into my life and made this one aspect of motherhood a breeze! For the moment I am not even using a purse, it’s just a fanny pack everyday for me for the foreseeable future. And I’m not mad about it!

An Up-cycled Dinosaur Embroidered Baby Shirt

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My first make for our coming baby boy! Right away when friends and family started finding out that we were expecting I started getting asked if I I’m planning on making all of my baby’s clothes, and I always have to answer that I’m definitely not! I spend so much time on each piece that I make, so I end up only completing a handful of projects a year, and that just won’t work for a growing baby. But I have been excited to make a couple special things to welcome him into the world. It’s one of the things that has been helping me to relax and prepare mentally.

So my first make has been a little butter yellow henley style t-shirt, embroidered with the sweetest little dinosaurs. The fabric I used is from a shirt I thrifted a few months ago that I didn’t love the fit of. Unfortunately the thrift store near me decided to permanently keep their change rooms closed after they closed them in 2020, and sometimes it’s hard to get the sense of how something will fit by just holding it up. I missed the exchange period and so I wanted to upcycle the shirt into something I would get to use. The fabric is a linen rayon blend, it’s very soft, and it was just enough to cut a baby shirt from.

I used a PDF pattern I found on Etsy: the Miguel Shirt from a shop called costurinha sewing patterns. The pattern includes a long and short sleeve option, and sizes for baby’s and kids. I made this one in the smallest size, the 3 month size, but I’m hoping to get some more use from this pattern in the future. I think a colour-blocked version of it would be really fun as well. The only change I ended up making to the pattern was to add a seam down the back piece. I was using that shirt I thrifted, so I didn’t have enough fabric to cut the entire back piece as one, but I actually love the seam. I don’t think it looks out of place at all and it was what got me thinking about that colour-blocked version.

The dinosaur embroidery pattern is from the Love Embroidery magazine, originally printed in issue 15, but after that issue they added it to their free pattern archive online. I’ll link to the pattern below, which is a design for the magazine by Jessie Newton. It was such a quick and easy one for such a cute touch to this shirt. I used one of my favourite methods for transferring the pattern: I traced it with pencil onto some water soluble sew-on interfacing (affiliate link), and then basted that interfacing onto the shirt before stitching. The interfacing just rinses away when you are done stitching.

I ironed this little shirt before taking these pictures but honestly that will be the last time this ever gets ironed. It was so finicky of course! And really I think with linen wrinkles are just a part of the look. I’ve linked everything relevant below, and I can’t wait to share a photo of my little one wearing this when he arrives!

Links:

Miguel Shirt Pattern: costurinha sewing patterns

Little Dinosaurs Embroidery Pattern by Jessie Newton: Love Embroidery Magazine

Wash-away sew-on interfacing (affiliate link)

Sewing a Nightshirt from a Thrifted Texmade Ibex Bedsheet

Since I've started obsessively thrifting I have a new joy for sewing and embroidery. This was my first full circle project that started with me getting giddy in a thrift store about a Texmade Ibex bed sheet that brought me right back to my childhood. I love that feeling of nostalgia I get in thrift stores, but the sheet had so many holes and stains that I just enjoyed the memories that seeing it brought me, and then carried on my way. As I worked my way through the rest of the thrift store I just could not stop thinking about it. When I was younger my siblings and I had these same flannel bedsheets (in a different colour way) and we also had matching pyjamas made out of the same striped flannel. On top of that my teddy bear even had matching pyjamas! So when I got the idea to turn this damaged sheet into an adult version of those pyjamas I basically ran back to the linen department of the thrift store to scoop it up.

This nightshirt wasn't exactly on my list of things to make for the upcoming season, or for my home, but it was just such a fun idea in my head that it got bumped to the front of my project queue and I've been working on it almost non-stop for the last month. I wanted to make it really special with some embroidery on the front pocket and the edges finished with the same blanket stitch that the sheet edges are finished with. I'm using a vintage sewing pattern here that I found on Etsy: Butterick 6885. It's a unisex pattern for a nightshirt and pants. After cutting out the pieces for the nightshirt it looks like I might have enough leftover to make some shorts, but anyways that will be a later project, I usually just sleep in a nightshirt anyways.

For the pocket piece I cut it in a way that would be mostly blank fabric with just a bit of the stripe running along the top. I needed a blank canvas for the embroidery but I still wanted it to tie in nicely with the stripes on the shirt. I used an embroidery pattern by Sarah K. Benning called Summer Flowers. It's not available currently on her website but a couple times a year she will do a re-release of all her old embroidery patterns. It was a pretty fiddly embroidery pattern but my main frustration with it was that I just could not get the pattern transferred onto the fabric. Usually to transfer patterns I just trace them with pencil or use some graphite transfer paper, but the flannel was too fluffy for this and it was so hard to get even the most basic shape of the flowers down. So basically I ended up just eyeballing it flower by flower which worked well enough. Next time I work with flannel I'm going to buy some of that paper that you print the pattern onto, embroider, and then it dissolves away in water. There was also a lot of outlining on this pattern but I actually loved that and found it very relaxing.

Once I had the embroidery done I could cut out the pocket piece and start assembling the night shirt. Attaching the pocket is the first step of the pattern so I couldn't start the until the embroidery was done. The shirt came together very fast, only slowed down by the fact that I wanted to do so much hand-stitching on it. I used a closed blanket stitch to attach the pocket and hem the bottom of the shirt, and I used chain stitch around the collar and the sleeve cuffs. I am so happy with this nightshirt, it almost feels too beautiful to wear to bed.

Making this just really made me so enthusiastic about all the possibilities there are when it comes to thrifting. I would have never thought to make something like this if I hadn't seen the sheet and got the inspiration from that first. Another section in the thrift store that I've been getting a lot of inspiration from is the table linens. There are often such beautiful hand embroidered napkins and tablecloths. Sometimes stained from years of families gathering and enjoying meals, but if cut the right way could be made into summer dresses, camisoles (something like my Wattlebird Cami), and baby clothes. Anyways, now back to my list of things I would actually like to have done by summer! I would like to sew a couple more lightweight summer dresses and I have a wedding dress I need to start planning as well!

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