Today I am joining Sarah of The Fifth Street Palace and Abbi of Proverbs 31 Living for another Thursday of sharing a homemade Christmas project.
I am happy to say that I can cross another homemade Christmas gift off of my list. I have been working on this set for several weeks and am glad to have it finished finally. I have been crocheting the animals during little bits of time and just finished last night. The playmat was complete a few weeks ago, so now this set is ready to wrap up for my littlest guy.
I followed the tutorial I found at this site to make the playmat. It was quite easy since it was just two circles of fabric, some loops made of bias tape, and cording strung through the loops. (I like how the drawstring cord looks like a fence around the farm.) I searched a couple of local fabric stores and several sites online for just the right farm fabric. I finally found what I was looking for at this Etsy shop. The fabric for the back of the playmat was leftover from the toddler backpack I recently made. This will allow my toddler to play with some cars on the back side if he gets tired of playing with the animals on the other side.
The patterns for the chick, duckling, and sheep came from pattern set #2 at Kristieskids. The pig and horse patterns came from pattern set #1 on the same site. None of the animals were hard to make, but they did take some time. I used yarn from my stash, most of which had been donated to me. This made the animals nearly free which was great.
All of the animals can be contained inside the playmat when the drawstring ties are pulled. I am not sure how easy that is going to be, but I liked the option of closing up everything. I do hope that my son likes this set, but know that as a toddler he will not understand how much time and love his mommy put into making this for him. That is alright because I didn’t make this for his praise I made it for him to enjoy. A smile is all the reward I will need. 
