100% upcycled rugs

i don’t know about you, but we get our bathrugs filthy constantly. the ones that i’d gotten at the market a while back were falling apart (and i never could stand them in the first place) so all i had left was the rug i knitted out of 13 old t-shirts. so i finally managed to find the time to make new rugs out of old towels and sheets, as i saw a while ago in the book handmade home (another of the projects in this book you can see here).

i used:

1. super worn-out and/or hideously ugly towels

2. a *slightly* worn-out bedsheet

i’m not writing a tutorial because it’s already in the book. but basically it’s just a towel at the bottom, the sheet on top and strips of towel sewn on top of the sheet. and beware: use a machine needle of at least 100 in order to get through all the layers.

i did my first rug as the book instructed except for one thing. seeing as my towel was very worn and thin, i put another layer of towel between it and the sheet. i wouldn’t advise doing this because it was way too thick for turning and topstitching but also because the towel on top wasn’t laying flat very well. or at least not in mine. look at the picture at the beginning of this post. see that wave effect? sure, i took that picture after washing it and not ironing it, but it was already more or less like that before, too. (i didn’t take the picture before washing for the same old reason that my camera was broken, but now we have a new one!)

the second i did the same way, but without the extra towel layer. much better! i had a harder time with these strips because i couldn’t stand the flamingos in the original towel and i didn’t want them to be so visible.

and for the third i decided to try some other shapes, in this case, circles.

i really like the messy effect of the irregular lines and circles and i did them that way on purpose (it might seem strange, but it actually would’ve been easier to make them regular, with a rotary cutter). the strips are just topstitched, without any turning or protecting the edges. i was worried that they would fray beyond repair after washing but, luckily, that was just not the case! see here:

**update** unfortunately, they do end up fraying with a regular washing, as i wrote about here. i advise sewing with a zig zag!!

i want to make more of these rugs, but with different shapes sewn on top. i’ve already put aside a massive amount of worn-out towels. my husband asked me what in the world i’m going to do with all these bathroom rugs that i want to make. i say: you can never have enough! and as for those other old rugs that i couldn’t stand? i’ve already planned what to do with them! (what, you didn’t expect me to throw them out, did you?!)
**update** if you want to see the new rugs, they’re here!

last revised: 6 march 2012