personalized pool accessories: the footmat

i’ve already written about my first personalized pool accessory. now the second. most women in the locker room have a sort of synthetic mat they stand on as they get dried off and dressed. (edit: some readers asked me what these are. here you can see the ones at decathlon and now i saw that they even have them with feet drawn on them, but i swear that i’d never seen them like that before just now!) i didn’t want to buy something like that so i made my own little foot mats similar to these ones with our feet appliquéd on top.

i obviously used upcycled materials (what else?!): towels from my grandmother (which we didn’t use because the tiny percentage of polyester in them didn’t make us feel completely dried off) and scraps from one of the duvet covers i used for my portable pillow beds.

(update 10/03/15: for more detailed instructions on putting together the pieces, see this full tutorial on how to sew an upcycled bathmat!)

first i cut two pieces the same size for the base, one from a towel and the other from the duvet cover. then i drew our feet. if you want, you can download the shape of my and my daughter’s feet here.

i always like to glue the paper with the outline onto cereal boxes before cutting to give more stability to the patterns. then you trace the foot shapes onto heat-n-bond lite (or whatever other product for appliqués) once right side up and then again flipping the pattern wrong side up so as to make both left and right feet. you apply the heat-n-bond to the back of the towels, cut the feet out and iron them onto the duvet cover as per the instructions.

i was a little lazier with the other shapes and just pinned them into place. i made overlapping borders…

… and, seeing as there was too much empty space left, i made some circles for mine and spirals for my daughter.

then you sew around the edges of the cut shapes with a pretty tight zig-zag stitch. the shapes attached with heat-n-bond lite don’t slip around…

…but the ones without it can, so you need to be really careful when sewing them (and use a million pins!).

then you sew the front and back together. here’s my foot mat…

…and my daughter’s, who, as you can see, loves her foot mat!

i’ve gotten a *ton* of compliments from the other swimmers and conversations similar to this:

• her: i love your foot mat! where did you buy it?
• me: thanks! actually, i made it.
• her: *you?!*
• me: (a little embarassed) yeah… i like sewing.
• her: but where did you find those feet?
• me: i made them. they’re my feet.
• her: (amazed) how did you do it?!
• me: with some towels and a piace of a duvet cover.
• her: nooo! what a cool idea! you’re so creative!

but you don’t have to go regularly into a changing room to be able to use this type of mat. you can also use it as a tongue-in-cheek bath rug in front of the toilet to give the guys in your family a bit of fun!