Car Play Mats

My siblings and I had the best car play mat growing up. My maternal grandmother made it for us out of some canvas-type material. She drew on the white fabric with fabric markers and included some of our favorite local places . . . . our market, our church, our house, our school, etc. We loved that car mat and played with it for many, many hours.

Well I haven't had the creative energy to make a hand-drawn play mat for my boys but I wanted them to have something similar to spend many of their own hours playing with.

I was fortunate enough to find a panel of pre-printed fabric at one of my favorite local fabric haunts (Fabric Center) after son #1 was born. I backed it with a heavy weight burlap-y type fabric. Simple sewing - sew all edges, right sides together, leaving a small opening in the middle of one side for turning. Turn and sew up the opening. Then I was at the same fabric store just recently and happened upon a new panel and couldn't resist making it for son #2. This one happens to have a train track all around the edges which son #1 thinks is really cool - I think he's tried to trade with son #2 but no go.

For this second play mat, I found this fun fabric to back the panel with. It's not a panel (repeating pattern with a stop every 36" or so) - just regular old fabric. But it really does make the whole play mat a "two-in-one" mat. Flip it over and you have all new roads to drive on.I'm confident that my Grandma Margie would have done something more personal and hand-drawn if she were alive to play with her great-grandsons. But these simple, easy to make car play mats make my boys happy enough!