Car play mat

A is big into cars and trucks these days, he will play with matchbox cars for hours.  I made this blanket for him for Christmas so he has somewhere to drive his cars.
I spent a lot of time brainstorming how to make this play mat so it would be washable.  I ended up doing raw edge applique for all the buildings then piecing the roads in like a quilt.

I had fun designing all the buildings and putting them together.  There are two houses, the green one on the right is ours.

A construction lot where Andrew can play with all his bulldozers.

A school house and generic shop/restaurant.

A hospital (mommy's work) and a mail box.  

A police station (daddy's work) and a fire station.

A gas station with car wash and the only 4 parking spaces in town.

The grocery store and of course our favorite store, Target.

A barber shop and church.  (Those stained glass windows on the church are one of my favorite parts, they are from a fabric with hot air ballons.)

I also was really excited about the little flower buttons for the window boxes.

I backed it with fleece, since the fleece is thick I didn't even bother with batting.  Then I quilted in the ditch along the roads.  I probably should have used black thread to quilt it but I was too lazy to change my thread, oh well.

I added a little handle to it could be rolled up with his cars inside and toted along. 

I just sewed the straps right into the binding and added some snaps.  You can also see where I melted my fleece a bit, oops.  I was ironing in the dark while the baby was asleep in our room this morning :)