Train Play Mat

This was intended to be part of my Easter Challenge. Oh well I got there in the end!

E has this Thomas the Tank Engine Busy Book which is essentially a big play-mat with 12 cheaply made trains and so on. E loves it, there are quite a few ‘books’ in the range and you can usually get them for around £5 in supermarkets and so on. Although they’re not great quality they’re a good way of getting a lot of little figures on a theme.

Anyway onto the mat. I made E a dinosaur mat like this one for Christmas and I decided to make him a similar sized train play mat. I did various sketches of the best way to fill the space. Then my clever husband reminded me that the track needed to be a complete circuit so the trains could go round and round and round. So I settled on a figure of eight track with a road bridge and a lake at the side (so the trains can fall in and get rescued!)

It’s all made with felt apart from the outside of the tracks which I made by finger knitting brown wool – who knew that skill would come in handy!

For the road bridge I stitched two pieces of felt together to make it stiffer and simply sewed it down either side of the tracks leaving a loop unattached.

I bought a clear plastic pencil case for the trains so the whole thing can be thrown in my bag for playtime out and about.

E loves it. It hasn’t quite stood up to his love – the trains don’t have moveable wheels so they drag on the sleepers, I’m going to have to sew them down more firmly!