more floor

Truly this boy spends half of his day on the floor. Even when he's supposed to be in his bouncy seat, he somehow makes his way out and down (clearly I should start buckling him in).

For the past few weeks I've been folding up a blanket and putting it on the floor for him to play on. Remember the Christmas blanket (and the duvet that just keeps giving)?

Well, on a clean floor with a baby that never spits up, it makes the perfect play mat. But on our floor (which is no longer clean ten minutes after a thorough cleaning), and with this particular baby who spits up pretty regularly, I finally figured an actual floor mat was in order.

Fortunately, half of the work for a mat was already done. Remember this other holiday blanket?

I ended up with a handful of extra stripes after putting it together (a few of them even sewn into a block), which had just gone into the scrap bucket. So I pulled them back out, added a few more (as well as a big chunk of baby cord on one end, because really, who needs the whole mat to be striped anyway?) The back is one more worn out sheet (this one a fitted sheet -- when I cut off the elastic corners I just randomly left about two inches of fabric on them, but I'm thinking they would make a great pre-made ruffle on . . . something. Don't you think?)

I doubled the batting, just to give him some extra cushion, and so far it has been great. It's big enough for plenty of play (about the size of a crib sheet), and small enough for easy washing.

Before binding the thing together, I over-stitched the seams of the stripes, to pass for quilting. The block of blue baby cord I just left open. I was thinking, the other day, while once again admiring the superb baby quilt our friend Melissa made for this boy when he was born, that it might be fun to stitch his name on the open spot. One of these days. Maybe. If my ambition outweighs the laundry basket.