Madeline's room: the tale of the floorcloth

I'm happy to report we've been making more great progress on Madeline's room! I've scoured the internet in search of the perfect rug to grace the floor in there and I had no luck.  I found a couple that I liked but even if we could afford them, they were so expensive I wouldn't dare let Madeline walk on them, much less make them the center of her play area.  Then I happened upon this tutorial.  She takes a tablecloth she found on sale and turns it into a floor cloth for her daughter's room. Awesome. And so I started looking everywhere for tablecloths I liked.  No luck again.  

Two things you have to know about me.  One: I often times get grand ideas of what I want (especially in relation to aesthetics and design) and I have a hard time settling for anything less.  Two: I have an oversized creative gap.  In other words I sometimes have a hard time transporting these grand ideas from my head to the medium in front of me. 

I woke up one night with a design for an amazing floorcloth. It was a vision, ha. I felt certain I could make it happen.  So we ordered two and a half yards of wide, heavy duty canvas.  And I began. And it sucked.  It was so ugly, extremely time consuming and an overall disaster.   

So we regrouped. I painted over the entire canvas with Behr Southern Beauty.  Much to my surprise, two coats covered my hideous mess.  Then I found a free template for a cardboard stencil here, at Jones Design Company.   And thus my beautiful floor cloth had an identity at last.  It's far from finished.  I'm only a couple rows in, and the whole design will need another coat (at least) but I'm really really happy!  It's been a great project. After I'm done painting I'll cover the whole thing in water-based polyurethane. That'll protect it from sticky fingers and juice spills.  

The last step for me anyway, will be wrapping it around a cheap rug from Ikea.  A friend of mine suggested that for a little cushion and I love the idea.  I'd originally intended to put some no-slip mats under it, but the rug will be the same price and overall better.  Plus I can reuse the rug if I ever want/need to.

I think that about sums it up! Wordy. Sorry.  It's not a tutorial, but I did want to give credit where credit is due and explain why it's taken me so stinkin' long to make some progress.  

What do you think?! :)