Yay for making beautiful daily use things!
I decided I needed a new rug for my bathroom sink. Being the crafty kind, I decided to make a project that had been rolling around in my head for years… a quilted felt rug. Simple really… just a few layers of felt handsewn together. Since you aren’t really quilting for any other reason than design, you don’t even have to fill in, you could just stitch a border and stop sewing there.
Materials required:
- Wool felt by the yard - I used 25% - 30% wool felt (with rayon) in three different colors, 2/3 yard each. The wool can be fulled (felted) so will shrink a bit, but any size rug can be made (one side will be at max the width of the wool felt, and wool can come in 10 yard bolts).
- safety pins - for basting
- chenille needle - pointy sharp and pretty stout, perhaps a hair bigger than doubled of the thread you have chosen
- tatting thread - I used almost all of one ball of the Presencia (80?) available at Fancy Tiger Crafts
There are three basic steps to making this rug:
- Lay out your felt, smooth it out, and pin together with safety pins. Quilters like to pin about a hand width apart, you can probably get away with a little more distance.
- Sew the layers together, removing safety pins as you go. Shorter lengths of thread actually go faster. I make lengths from holding the thread midbody and stretching your hand away with the end as far as you can. I like to make the knots like this, usually three on top of each other and burying my tail within the layers. Then I sew with a basic running stitch, finishing with another three in layer knots. Once all the layers are sewn to your likeing (perhaps with at least a border), you are ready to full. Trim edges if necessary!
- Full your rug! Wash and dry it, the harder the cycle the smaller and more dense it will be. Fulling by hand is another option… but since it is a rug, felting to an exact size isn’t usually a concern. If you don’t want to full it too hard, you could always put a damp towel in the dryer with the rug and dry them together. Feel free to pull out your rug while it is still damp and gently block flat.
Wow! Your feet will be so happy every morning and night.