Circle Rag Rug DIY

Okay as promised here is my circle rag rug!

This mat involved cutting your old rags into roughly one inch strips (I did this really roughly!) and then plaiting these strips together - you can see the ball of plaited material over on the left. I also used a combo of different materials, old clothes, shirts, bed sheets and the rug turned out fine :)

After plaiting all your rags, it's time to sew! Choose a zigzag stitch on your sewing machine and keep sewing round and round, over and over again.  This project is definitely on the longer end, it was a good week of watching trash tv whilst plaiting and then a couple of days of sewing for me to complete it. Also when I first tried to sew it on my machine I thought it was too thick so I spent the first night hand sewing (I didn't get very far!) and the next day (determined not to spend months stuck hand sewing!) I successfully jammed the plaits under the sewing machine foot - hooray!

Again Peachy killed it with her project supervisor status :)

In the above photos you can see how its a bit lumpy in the blue/purple zone this was before I had perfected my method, which simple involved, pining (with pins!) one circle at a time + ironing it all flat and then sewing that ring before repeating the process.  I also used a bed to make sure the mat stayed flat whilst sewing too :)

As I sewed I also squished both sides of the plaits together as they ran through the machine so the zigzag would catch both sides :)

Getting there!

and complete - hooray!

It's now living in our lounge room and it's so nice to have a little bit of warmth against our wooden floor boards, especially heading towards winter :)

I'm going to keep collecting old rags for future projects which lets me feel not so bad rejecting clothes from my wardrobe knowing they have a good future use!