The car caddy

This was one of those projects that seemed so involved that I thought I might never do it again.  So I made two at once, one for my son (Baby S) and one for his little friend.  My son LOVES his cars and would like to bring ALL of them EVERYWHERE.  The genius of this caddy, to me, was that we could limit the cars to 6, and we would always know if we were missing one.  As it turns out, Baby S would still prefer to bring all of his cars everywhere, but the caddy makes for a nice play mat at home.

I was inspired by two different car mats.

I loved the gas station and car wash elements from this one designed by Lisa Storms:

But I didn't want it to roll up.  I prefer the folding kind like this one from homemade by jill:

I also love how the pockets are numbered.  May as well squeeze in a little educational value.  Plus, it just looks super cute.

So I took my favorite parts of each and this is what I came up with:

And when you open it up:

I'm so happy I found fabric for the grass that's green and has trees.  My first choice would have been green faux-fur, but I looked at Fabricland and they didn't have any.   The roads look kind of like asphalt because it's a dark brown cotton speckled with black.  I used a medium weight denim for the back, so I was okay using light cottons for the front.  For the road lines, I marked where I wanted them on my fabric and then went over it with a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine using yellow thread.

I love that the gas station and car wash are interactive.  You can pretend to pump gas with the end of a shoelace:

Once the car is filled up, the hose gets put back in its holder:

And the cars can really go into the car wash:

This is what it looks like on the back when it's all opened up:

So it just folds up and closes with Velcro.  *Life Lesson: DO NOT SEW ADHESIVE VELCRO.*  Apparently, it's adhesive for a reason.  It gummed up my machine like CRAZY.  I was pretty near tears.  I felt my body temperature rise almost to boiling and then get the shivers.  I thought my sewing machine was a goner.  I searched google for a way to fix it and couldn't find anything useful.  Except the advice not to sew with adhesive Velcro.  News I could have used YESTERDAY. When the initial shock died down, I tried finishing the Velcro tabs by hand.  WOW.  That is some sticky adhesive.  It's not meant to EVER be sewn at ALL, so it just sticks real good.  And it does not like sewing needles.  It told me so by stabbing me in the fingers repeatedly with the dull end of the sewing needle.  I'm pretty persistent, but the adhesive got the better of me.  So I just stayed sad for a couple days, then thought about taking my machine apart and cleaning every sticky part.  Oddly and happily enough, after sitting for a couple days, all the gumminess was gone and it worked perfectly again!  HOORAY!  So I bought Velcro meant for sewing and finished my little project.

And it is such a fun toy that I think I just might make more one day.  As gifts.  It's fun because I let my husband choose the cars, so then it's really from all of us.  I do set guidelines for the choosing of the cars.  All different colours.  My husband finds that overly restrictive because he'd rather pick the 6 awesomest cars, regardless of the colour.  But I feel that boys that are still toddlers would prefer to have six completely different looking cars, instead of the 6 coolest cars in the universe, all in red.  He did well, though, and even surprised me by choosing a police car, which I thought was fantastic, so that cars that speed on their way from the gas station to the car wash can be pulled over and ticketed.