A few weeks ago I received the delightful news from my niece that she and her husband had become the proud parents of Maisie. Of course, once the first buzz of congratulations had passed, my mind went into patchwork overdrive!

A playmat seemed like a useful gift to make for the new arrival. I had a search through my stash along with a quick search of baby mat images on the internet. Deciding to keep it simple I opted for a patchwork layout based on a gingham design. Having picked a floral fabric with a dark purple background I choose two other coordinating fabrics, one of medium value, the other light.

I quickly drew out the design, deciding on a 7 by 7 layout with a finished size of 28½” square. I made a similar size playmat for our Grandson and it had proved useful right through to him moving independently. I shared a post about how I designed and made his playmat.

To achieve the gingham effect the 7 by 7 layout needed 16 squares of the dark fabric; 24 squares of the medium fabric; and 9 squares of the light fabric. The squares were cut 4½” to finish at 4 inches square. So a half metre each of the dark and medium fabrics and a quarter metre of light fabric was all that was needed plus three width of fabric strips for the binding.

To speed up the cutting and piecing I did a bit of strip piecing before adding individual squares to finish the rows.

In my stash I found an offcut of Quilters Dream Green poly wadding large enough to fold in half to make a cushioning double layer of wadding for the playmat. The backing was an offcut of a piece of extra wide backing fabric. Having kept the patchwork design simple I decided to keep the quilting simple too – a diagonal cross hatch running across the blocks.

The double layer of wadding combined with the quilting made the mat a little bit stiff but I think that’s an advantage for a playmat as it doesn’t need to drape.

I made a label and attached it to the back. If you’d like a quilt label tutorial then hop over to my post all about making labels.

All in all a very satisfying project. The playmat was well received by Maisie’s parents and I’m looking forward to more cuddles with Maisie before too long – it’s great being a Great Aunt!

Allison