DIY baby placemat - with tutorial

So, yesterday I shared a tutorial on how to make a travel meal set for babies and toddlers. I made it as a Christmas gift for my cousin's baby girl, who's turning one next January. The full set includes a pouch for the cutlery, a placemat and a baby bib. Today I will be sharing a quick tutorial on how to easily make a custom placemat. 

The placemat I made is sized 29 x 24 cm, because I sized it for a baby, and besides I wanted it to fit in the pocket of the travel meal set pouch:

But if you follow the tutorial and just adjust the measurements you can make placemats any size. 

Materials needed: 

• a base for the placemat. This can be another placemat, felt, oilcloth, or some sort of insulation material, as long as you can sew it (if you can't sew it, you can still make the custom placemat, but use fabric glue instead), cut to the size of the placemat you want to make. 
• fabric. Your fabric should be sized to have a margin of about 2 cm in relation to the base of the placemat. In case you are making the placemat to match the travel meal set, use the same fabric or a coordinating one. 

Step 1: place the fabric on top of the placemat base, wrong sides together

Step 2: fold the edges over twice (to avoid fraying - same as if you were creating a hem), and pin in place. Sew all around.

Step 3: adjust the corners to make them prettier. I hand sewed a cheaters version of mitered corners:

And that's it. Your placemat is ready to be used!

You can pair it with just some cute baby cutlery and tie a ribbon to turn it into a simple gift...

...or you can make the full set:

To make the travel meal set pouch, click here for the tutorial.

To make the matching baby bib with pocket, check back here in the next few days for the tutorial.

Happy Tuesday!