beachy

One of the moms at a recent playdate pulled out the coolest blanket- it was waterproof fabric on one side and a lovely patterned fabric on the other. She told me she'd gotten it from Babystyle; when I looked it up, I nearly had a heart attack over the $75 price tag. I still liked the idea tho- a nice comfy blanket to sit on at the beach or park, without having to worry about dampness soaking through. I spend a lot of time sitting on the grass in our front yard while the boys play so we have some pretty raggedy old quilts that I use for that purpose. But it's never fun to stand up and discover that the grass was wetter than I thought so it soaked thru and my bum gets wet.

So I started scheming and this is what I came up with:


The top is made of some fat quarters that I picked up on a whim at the fabric store a few months ago. I didn't even trim them, just sewed them all together and then added a couple of borders from stash fabric. The backing is leftover waterproofed cotton that I had from sewing cloth diapers for Little Man (yay for stashing!). I've had the waterproof stuff *forever* and just couldn't get rid of it because it had been quite expensive. Plus I had over two yards of the stuff. It ended up being the prefect size for the backing of this quilt.

I was stumped for a while on what to use for the batting. It had to be very washable and since I wasn't going to heavily machine quilt everything, the batting had pretty much hold itself together. For a while it looked like I was going to use some old flannel, but there just wasn't enough. Finally I found some $1.99/yd fleece at the fabric store and bought a couple of yards. It worked perfectly for the batting- I didn't even have to cut it. The fleece has the added advantage of being totally washable and machine dry-able (is that a word?). This quilt is going to be throw into the wash many times so I didn't want something that I would have to be careful with.

We took it on a test run today and it worked great! It was heavy enough not to blow away in the ocean breeze, but not so big/heavy that it was difficult to carry (a major consideration when you're carrying all the gear + two kids down to the beach). My only addition will probably be to add some ties so it will be easier to roll up.

And here are some other beach pics from today: