I recently posted a picture on facebook of the girls playing with this farm play mat that we made for them a couple of years ago for Christmas. A lot of people wanted to see more and asked if I had written a post about it. This was long before I started my blog so unfortunately I hadn’t. So, I thought I’d take a few pictures for anyone who was interested to see more. The girls love this and play with it quite often still. And it’s extra special because it was made with love by us! The homemade Christmas we did was great, and I loved giving the girls special things that were made especially for them. Now I’m starting to think about what I could make them this year! I had better get started.

Here is the whole play mat. My husband actually designed it! I had a lot of other things to make so I enlisted his help in designing this one. It was really very simple. I would definitely not call myself a sewer, and am more of a make-it-up-as-I-go-along type. All we did was go to Spotlight and find lots of different kinds of materials that could be used for different things. The background is thick felt. You can see it has been well loved and has started pilling, which I expected to happen. That’s ok, I think it just makes it look more like grass.

Once we had cut out all the pieces, we stuck them on with fabric glue to hold them in place and then I stitched around them.

Vegie patch.

Field of flowers.

Lake/dam with a rainbow bridge and buttons for little stepping stones (and more textures).

We used embroidery thread to sew on some little dots to look like grains for the chickens to peck at.

Paddock for the cows.

Some mud for the pigs to roll in.

The wooden animals we have can be found here.

When everything had been sewn on, I added another piece of felt to the back and stitched all the way around! And that’s all there was to it.

Tell me, what have you made for you kids for Christmas? I’d love some more ideas for this year!