Indiana's play mat

I just wanted to share the quilted play mat that I made for my best friend's newest addition baby Indiana last year.  He's coming up on a year old now, where does the time go?!?

After the rush to get Saffy's quilt finished before her birthday (it took me 3 months from the start in total due to time and financial constraints!)  I managed the play mat in a week!  It was a much more relaxed make, and I loved the colours on this.  The more eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that my blog header features the patchwork from this quilt :-)

My middle boy Benji chose the animal print fleece for the backing.  I just LOVE it!  I have a whole stash of it in the fabric box at the moment, most ear-marked for one of my WIPs, but the rest I am itching to make into hats and scarfs next Winter.  It's so cheerful I can't help but smile when I catch sight of it.
I am generally met with strange looks when I mention I quilt with fleece for backing, is it that odd?  I tend to choose it for durability and wash-ability for small people, especially babies.

The bright patchwork middle was lovely to put together, and we chose red cotton to frame it, and a really vibrant green ribbon for edging.

 

The wadding was very thick and rather tricky to get through my machine, I ended up unpicking my first attempts at diagonal lines, and starting over, with straight quilting for the frame, and diagonals across the patchwork.

 

Pinning the ribbon on is my favourite part!

  I just love the finish and texture difference using ribbon makes to the whole quilt.

 

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And finished!! 

Being tested out for comfort by my bigger boys :-)

 

I hope to re-visit a few more of my early quilting efforts over the next couple of weeks, so expect a few more photo-spam posts !

Emma