Finished - playmat quilt

I loved making this little playmat quilt. It is for my nephew and his partners first baby. I started making it about a month before the baby was due, but she surprised us all and came three weeks early!

What I like best about making these quilts is that they are small - so it allows me to try out different techniques. I have made a couple of other ones for my niece's children, see here and here

I knew the parents had decorated the nursery in lemon, so wanted something to tone in with that, and also that they liked the small pattern fabric I had used to make a cushion for them as a christmas gift.

I was flicking through a book by Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke 'Material Obsession', and liked a quilt Sarah had made called 'Corner Shop'. I adapted this pattern making all the blocks smaller, so my finished play mat would be 36" square. I tried out the block full size at first and then adjusted my blocks to make them smaller.

I had bought a moda charm pack at the festival of quilts last year, and thought that would work well and once I had sorted out the quilt design I also bought a layer cake of the same design so I would have lots of choice of the different colours and patterns.

So the centre became 16 blocks each measuring 5 inches square

Once stitched together, I made the inner boarder in lemon, and then added two rows of smaller 3 inch squares around the edge.

Clara came up to my workroom see what I was doing so late into the evening, and took a few photos of me working away. I thought I would add an action photo here, this is where I am just finishing the last strip to finish the quilt top …..

Next day I layered up the quilt ready for some simple machine quilting. I used a slightly thicker wadding than I would for a cot quilt, as this design is for a playmat. I quilted diagonally on the centre - just 'stitch in the ditch', then around the boarder on both edges…..

….. and just a straight line between the smaller blocks along the lengths. Then made some matching bias binding for the edge.

I really love this fabric, and was really pleased with the way it all came together. I had also tried a couple of new techniques that I'd not used before - setting the squares en-point, and adding triangles to the edges of the squares - is this called broken dishes?? so that was all new for me. My original plan was to embroider a little something in each of the white centre blocks, but in the end I thought it would look too fussy so left them plain.

Then the grand ta dah!! Clara obliged and held the quilt up for me!

We went to visit the new baby last week, and took the gift with us…. so here is the new baby girl, sleeping peacefully on her playmat!