Fat Quarter Friday: Travel Changing Pad

This week I decided to make a new changing pad for my diaper bag. The one it came with is floppy, bulky, and already has a rip in it, so fat quarter friday is here to save the day!

Materials:
1 Fat Quarter
Some minky, fleece, or flannel (whatever is soft that you have lying around, roughly 24 x 16 in)
Thin ribbon (1/8 in) or yarn
Needle with an eye big enough for your ribbon or yarn

Step 1: Place your fat quarter and your minky right sides together and cut to size. I just made mine roughly the size of the changing pad that came with my diaper bag, about 24 x 16 inches. 

 Step 2: Pin together and sew, leaving a 3-4 inch opening at one end. I have a zillion pins in this because I stink at sewing minky, it always pulls funny as you can see in the picture below. (Note: If you want your changing pad to be a little thicker, at this point add some quilt batting on top of your sandwich before you pin, and then sew around.)

 Step 3: Turn your pad right side out and sew up the opening. I hand stitched mine together, but you can quickly sew it with your machine. Now do a top stitch around the edge of the mat about 1/8 inch from the edge. You could get to this point and call it good, but I wanted to do something to it so that it was a little more interesting and stable.

 Step 4: We're now going to put some ties on our little changing pad. Use something small like buttons to visually lay out where you want your ties to go. You can have as few or as many as you want. Once it looks good to you, mark where each button was with a fabric pencil.

 Step 5: Thread your needle with your ribbon. Start with your fat quarter side up and punch down through to the soft side.

 Push the needle right back up to the fat quarter side about 1/8 - 1/4 inch away from where you came out.

 Now you should have your ribbon with both tails up on the fat quarter side.

 Tie a knot with your ribbon and cut off the ends to your desired length.

 Repeat on all the marks you made.

 Admire your work! It looks like it belongs doesn't it? The nice thing about this changing pad is you can just throw it in the washing machine when it gets dirty. My other one was a wipe off one, which kind of grosses me out. Enjoy!