Sewing: Flower Play Mat

This flower play mat is a fun and easy project. It took me a whole weekend to finish, but, only because I was juggling cooking, laundry, house-cleaning, grocery-run, and library-run.

The project from start to finish, if one can devote uninterrupted time, should not take more than a few hours. Once the pieces are cut and ready, the sewing goes quite fast.

The fun part is to add little baby notions like mini rattle, cellophane etc tucked into the petals for the babies to discover and engage with. I can just picture little cuties getting their Tummy Time and grabbing a petal to have the rattle amuse them.

Of course, this was not for my babies who are much too old for a play mat. It's for a good friend who deserves all the happiness that life can give, who is expecting her babies this summer.

The idea came from DK Books Made for Baby, which has 50 beautiful projects to sew.

I went with a 28-inch diameter circle for the center. The petals are roughly a rounded rectangle cut in half, coming to about 10 inches tall and 13 inches wide. All the fabrics are baby flannel which was on sale at Fabric Depot. The batting for the flower center is actually two layers of fleece fabric plus a layer of quilt batting, so it is well-padded and snuggly warm to hang out in.