Zip zoom surely describes the kind of weekend I had, but I do so love a productive weekend. My list of accomplishments includes: replacing a jacket zipper, cobbling together cotton batting to make a bigger piece of cotton batting, taking my car to get new windshield wipers since necessary rubber pieces froze to the windshield and came off (I could have done it myself but it's under warranty so why not let them?), ran a few errands, did some blog upkeep, dusted and cleaned the bedroom, knitted a little, and made the babycakes a little gift. Throw in a birthday dinner for my dad and that tops off a very busy weekend. One that I'm quite pleased with. First off--I pootled around on my blog to add some social media icons without having to resort to understanding extensive code or paying someone to help. I found a really helpful write-up that linked to a few helpful sites (click here) and voila--a few little tidbits that will make it easier for us to connect. If you click on each one you'll be able to send an email, see my Facebook page, Instagram feed, Pinterest boards, and sign up for my feed. I realized I would mention "Oh I have this now" and never really provided a way to connect outside of that post, so there they are now if anyone is interested. When I don't have much to write about I tend to post photos or share links or other tidbits there, just in case you start to miss me :) If you'd like to do the same for your blog it was really quite simple and took me maybe half an hour tops to do it. OK, enough of that. Last weekend I was avoiding doing something, I'm sure, and looking at fabric online. The A-train is madly in love with transportation--trains, planes, helicopters, motorcycles, etc., so when I saw a link to a playmat kit I immediately clicked. I saw the price and thought "Um, no" but did buy a little bit of yardage to make essentially the same thing for about a third of the price. Throw in a snowy afternoon, some tea, and some light curvy quilting and you've got a recipe for a playmat. I still possess way too many pairs of toe socks for any sane adult to have, but I still love them. Oh, and there's the playmat. I needed to add some quilting to this as there's batting in there, but I didn't want to override the cuteness of the print by throwing in too many stitches and making it too quilty. So I went for outlining the roads and that's it. The spacing is fine as per the batting instructions, and you don't really notice it, which is what I wanted. Can I just tell you that curvy quilting is not easy? There was so much quilt wrestling you would have thought this was a much more intricate design. My stitching is not marvelous in some areas, but for something to go on the floor I'm not really minding too much. It gave a really nifty look to the back-- I didn't want the quilting to be seen much on the back, either, and it's not. I thought that this could be flipped over and this could be the landing strip side for when they're landing helicopters and doing other important playtime tasks. I bound this with a plain black and white stripe as it reminded me of road signs, as well as the streets themselves. I opted again for a fun stitch for the binding. This one made me think of railroad tracks so I went with it (more for my own amusement than the baby's). I'm still loving putting on my bindings this way, so I'm going to keep at it. It makes the least enjoyable part of making a quilt (for me, anyway) much more fun. If this might tickle the fancy of someone you know, I got my fabrics from the Fat Quarter Shop (except the binding, which was in my stash). The main print is 'Zip Zoom Playmat Multi' and the back is 'Madrona Road Haystack in Graphite.' This was a great Saturday afternoon project, and quite satisfying. The nephew got quite a kick out of it, too. He'll probably be more interested when he's home, as opposed to in the middle of a crazy house where there are bookshelves to clear and soccer balls to roll around. I am quite tuckered after a long, busy day so I'm calling it a night. Have a good week! I'll be in meetings at work all week. Trust me, they don't make words to adequately convey how exciting it will be... Linking up here: Sundays: Sunday Showcase, Think Pink Sunday, Submarine Sunday Monday: CraftOManiac Monday, Making Monday Marvelous, Market Yourself Monday, Made By You Mondays, Tuesdays: Take-a-Look Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, Homework Wednesdays: Your Whims Wednesday, We did it Wednesday, Whatever Goes Wednesday Thursdays: Catch a Glimpse, Craftionary Friday: Link Party Palooza, Frugal Friday, Weekend Bloggy Reading Saturdays: Show and Tell Saturdays