Rainy Day Play "Quilt"

After a very rainy week the sun made a perfectly timed reappearance on Columbus Day when the Mr had a day off of work allowing us to go apple picking, something that's been on my Fall bucket list for years. unfortunately I knew the ground would be wet and that we would probably end up sitting on the ground at some point. Knowing that the regular blankets we usually use as play areas for her weren't going to cut it in the mud, I whipped up this water proof "quilt" during her morning nap before venturing out for an afternoon at the apple orchard.

I'll start out by saying I have NO experience in quilting but I was able to complete this project from concept to packing it in the diaper bag in about 2 hours, with a little help from my husband to cut and pin a few pieces.

Rainy Day Play "Quilt"

Materials: 3 large scraps of fabric about 1/2 yd each (A,B,C)
1 yd PUL
thread
embroidery floss

1. Cut nine 1 ft square pieces of fabric, 3 of each color (A,B,C).

2. Pin sqaures right sides together into 3 rows of three in the following order: 

• Row 1: A, B, C
• Row 2: C, A, B
• Row 3: B, C, A

3. Sew the squares to form the three rows using a 1/2 inch seam allowance. 

4. Now pin the rows right sides together matching up and pinning open the seams. You can take the extra step of using an iron to press the seams open but I was in a hurry and it turned out just fine when I only pinned them open to sew. Sew using 1/2 inch seam allowance to form a large square from now on called the Quilt Square.

5. Now that you have your Quilt Square pieced together, lay it onto the PUL matching up one of the corners and two edges. Cut the PUL along the remaining two sides of the Quilt Sqaure to make a PUL square of the same size.
6. Match up the sides and pin the Quilt Square to the PUL square right sides together and sew using 1/2 inch seam allowance and leaving a gap a few inches wide to pull the piece through.

7. Trim the edges to 1/4 inch and clip the corners to the seam then turn the piece right side out through the gap you left.
8. Pin the edges smooth and sew a 1/4 inch hem all the way around to close the gap and keep the edges in place. We want a mat not a bag! :)
9. Now the whole point of this is to have a dry place to sit on damp/muddy ground. That's what the PUL is for; it keeps water from seeping through the blanket to baby's bum the way a normal blanket would. Now the more holes we put in the PUL by sewing through it, the more places there are for water to leak through so we can't stitch all over quilt style to keep the two sides of the blanket from slipping around. Instead I used embroidery floss in a complimentary color to stitch small Xs at the four corners of the central square in my "quilt." You can do French knots instead if you prefer the look or place the stitches in the center of some of your quilt squares instead but I recommend as few stitches as possible to hole the piece together in order to maximize water-proofing.
Enjoy!