When I bought a train set for Buddy’s 2nd birthday, I knew I wanted keep it set up. If we had to set it up every time we wanted to play, it wouldn’t be played with often. We don’t have the space for a train table, so we decided to use our coffee table. We hardly ever use our living room, so it wasn’t hard for us to dedicate it to the trains.
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Originally, we had cardboard under the train tracks to keep them from scratching the table. It wasn’t the most attractive solution, but it worked fine for us. The end of the school year was really busy, so upgrading the cardboard had to wait until summer break.
I bought green felt for the background and gray felt for some roads. I also used blue felt scraps from my quiet book. (Read about my quiet book here.) My original plan was to just have the green felt, but I eventually decided to add roads as well. Buddy’s train set came with many cars. When the cars and the trains are on the tracks, they are really full. It’s hard to push everything around. I hoped that roads would give the cars more places to drive and spread out. Plus, our set has a road crossing that would be much more fun with a road to drive on.
I put the felt on the table and traced the edge of the table with tailor’s chalk. Then I cut out the felt and ironed it.
After that, I put it on the table and put the tracks on top of it. I cut some gray and blue felt scraps and put them where I wanted them on the table. Then I used the chalk to sketch outlines of the road and water. Since we have a little bridge, it made sense to me to have that go over water. I also did some water on another part of the mat to add a little color. When I did the road, I made it the same width as the one on the road crossing.
Once everything was cut out, I used fabric glue to glue it to the green felt. Then I used puffy fabric paint to make the dashed line in the road. The hardest part of the whole process was keeping Buddy away from it while it dried! I’m really happy with the final product. Buddy loves his train table more than ever, and he plays with it every day.
