a reversible playmat

A couple of weeks ago I came across this fab idea to make a farm playmat on a great new crafty blog
'Peekaboo! Make and Do'.  Jan who writes the blog is also a teacher and she has lots of really great ideas on her blog and facebook page http://www.facebook.com/PeekabooMakeLearnSewAndDo?ref=br_tf

Here is Jan's cute one...

I really love having toys that encourage imaginative and independent play and this is one of those- all you need to add is a few toy animals, a tractor or two and whatever else you can find with a bit of a farm theme (we had a Fisher Price Little People Farm Set which came in handy). I got the animals from a shop here in Tauranga, AJ's Emporium, you can probably find them at Dollar Value type stores as well, or search Trademe.

I made this mat pretty quickly- if I don't need to measure and pin things I generally don't- kids don't mind if squares don't exactly line up and the mat is a little wonky on one side!  

As I was sewing my squares together I was thinking what to use to sew on to the back of the playmat and then I had a brainwave to use a car mat I bought from Payless Plastics a while ago. (The car mat is a laminated fabric that you just buy off the roll in store).  So one side farm, one side cars= 2 happy children :)

 

Most of the fabrics for the farm playmat I already had (this project is a great one to use up some of your scrap fabric stash) but I did get a couple of fat quarters from Bernina as well-they had a corn field one which was great plus a grass one and a stony pebble one which was good for the 'pig sty'. 

Thanks again Jan for the great idea, it was fun to do a bit of sewing again.  And I'll be sharing another post with some more of my favourite toys for little ones soon :)

Thanks for reading,
Megan x