Car playmat

My cousin's eldest son is celebrating his 4th birthday soon.  He loves to play with toy cards, he has a collection at home and my parents have a collection at their house for when he comes over.  I decided a good present would be a car playmat that can be folded up and taken with him.

I was lucky enough to come across this fabric.

I'm afraid I can't for the life of me remember where I got it from and the selvedge is not printed so I don't know who makes it.

I didn't use a pattern for this one, I just winged it and there were  lot of mistakes I made that I wouldn't do again.  I wont bore you with them, I'll just say that my garage construction technique leaves a lot to be desired!

Here are the garages, a place to store any cars he wants to take with him, well 3 anyway.  This is the other end:

It's a metre by half a metre so should be big enough to provide him with some entertainment.  It folds up around the garages using the ribbons you can see there to make this:

I have no idea why it looks brown, both ribbon and backing fabric are black.  The backing fabric is actually a sheet from IKEA.  I suppose I did get some IKEA bargains, though none of the gorgeous fabric I see on other blogs!

I told my mum I was making this playmat and she told me that she'd wanted one of the road rugs that were around when I was a kid in the early 80s, but she couldn't afford it.  She then apologised to me for us having to miss out!  She has such a different view of my childhood than I do.  As far as me and my brother are concerned, we didn't want for anything as kids.  I don't mean we were spoilt, but I certainly never felt deprived!