Travel Coloring mat with Color Me fabric

Have you seen the adorable new fabric line designed by Hayley of Welcome to the Mouse House and Mouse House Creations for Michael Miller Fabrics?  It is so fun!  The fabric is a coloring book style fabric that is printed on Micheal Millers quality cotton couture line.  The idea is that you make something fun for your kids with the fabric and then they get to have a blast coloring it!  

There are four different fabrics, two princess themed and 2 space themed.  When Hayley emailed me and asked me to be part of her blog tour showcasing these new fabrics, I knew I had to get my hands on some of the space prints!  Today, I have a fun tutorial to give you an idea of something fun to sew with these fabrics!  

For this project, I used about a fat quarter of the "Space Adventures" to create a coloring mat for my kids!  

It has lots of space to color and some little marker pockets for holding up to 10 skinny washable markers for easy grabbing.

And the best part...it travels!  Just roll it up and snap it shut, throw it in your bag or let your kid tote it along, all the markers stay safely inside and your little ones can unroll and color whenever they want!  It would be perfect for restaurants, church, long doctors appointments...anytime you need an easy activity to keep your kids busy and quiet!  

After everything is colored, just take the markers out, throw it in the wash, and start all over again!  

Want to make a travel coloring mat?  Let me show you how!

For this project, you will need...

• A fat quarter (or 1/2 yard) of the Space Adventures fabric (or any of the other Color Me line) cut into a 15.5" x 22" rectangle
• ONE 15.5" x 28.5" rectangle of fabric for the back
• ONE 15.5" x 28.5" rectangle of thin quilt batting
• 1/3 yard of fabric for marker pockets cut into ONE 15.5" x 9" rectangle and TWO 7"x 9" rectangles
• 1/4 yard fabric for binding cut into THREE 2" x width of fabric strips 
• ONE 12.5" x 2" strip for the closure strap
• ONE snap

Take the three rectangle you cut for your marker pockets.  Fold the smaller rectangles in half, lining up the 7" sides as shown below.

With the folded edge at the top, draw the lines for the pockets.  Draw the first line 1.75" from the left, then draw 4 more lines every 1" passed that first line.  You should have 5 lines.

Lay those pieces on top of the bigger rectangle, the fold should be towards the middle and the raw edges should be lined up.  Stitch along the lines you drew, back stitch at the top of the fold to keep the threads from unraveling. 

Place the marker pocket and the Color Me fabric piece right sides together, lining up the marker pockets with the right side of the Color Me fabric.  (If your kid is a lefty, the left side might work better for them!) Sew the two pieces together with a 1/2" seam allowance.  Press the seam towards the marker pocket.

Sandwich your quilt batting between your back piece and your Color Me fabric/marker pockets.

Quilt to keep everything together.  Sew one line of quilting horizontally in the middle and one on the seam.  Then do any additional quilting you want, I did lines every 4" as shown below.

Make your closure strap by folding one of the short ends of your strip down 1/2", then fold your strip in half, unfold and fold the raw edges into the middle fold, refold in the middle and stitch the strap shut along the open side.

Position your strap on the backside of your mat, on the side opposite the marker pockets.  The middle of the strap should be about 4" from the bottom.  Line the raw edge up with the edge of the mat and baste it in place as shown below.

Sew your 2" binding strips together to form one long strip.  With the end of the strip in the middle of one of the sides of the mat, start sewing about 4" from the end of the strip and sew the strip to the back side of the mat with a 1/2" seam allowance.  Stop sewing when you get 1/2" from the corner.

Flip the strip straight up and then straight back down, lining it up with the edge on the next side.  Begin sewing again at the very top.  

Repeat the process above with all four corners.  Stop sewing about 8" from where you started.

Overlap the two ends of the strips and trim them so they overlap just 1".  With the strips right sides together sew the ends together with a 1/2" seam allowance, press the seam open.  Finish sewing the binding to the edge of the mat.

Press the binding up and over the raw edge of the mat.  Tuck the raw edge under and press, Stitch along the folded edge to secure the binding to the mat.

Add your snap to your strap.  You may want to fill it with markers and roll it up to check your snap placement.  With the mat right side down, I placed the post side of my snap facing up about .75" from the edge of the mat and the socket side of my snap facing down at the end of my strap. 

Your mat is done! Fill it with markers and color away!

Make sure you check out the other stops on the Color Me blog tour going on all of this week and next.  There is some really great Color Me inspiration!  I will be back on the tour with another project next week too, so be sure to come back and check it out!