DIY Rag Rug – Revisited! (WIP)

So apparently this whole rag rug stuff is addicting. I so love that you can really repurpose any fabric you want into a rag rug! The possibilities are endless! Also, I just can’t resist making stuff for baby Nora’s nursery!  Pinterest always inspires me, and I love that feeling when I actually follow through with stuff that I pin!  Here’s a picture of what totally inspired me…

http://www.upcyclemagazine.com

I just love the cherry blossom yarn applique on the finished rug, it really matches Nora’s room. (Which I am SO so proud of by the way!)  Done by her doting father! He totally surprised me with this room… it’s my favorite room in the house now. 🙂

Doting Dad!

I would show the rest of the room, but it kind of looks like baby clothes threw up in there… so I will wait until I can get it organized & then show you a pretty pretty room!  But for now back to the rug!

When I was at Walmart a few weeks ago I picked up a plain white fitted sheet for about $5.00. Of course, then I got home and found a flat white sheet laying around I could use, (it figures) but most likely will need more than one anyway so that’s ok! First step is to get everything washed up, and then to cutting it up!

 

Once your sheet comes out of the dryer all fluffy and warm you’re going to fold it in half and lay it out on a table or the floor, but you want to leave at least a 1 inch gap from the top… so not directly in half… just like shown below!

The next step (as you can see I already started that part) is to start making your strips!  The reason for the 1 inch gap at the top is because once you are done with the strips and then you unfold the sheet they will still be connected on both sides… this is important since we want the whole sheet to be one continuous piece of fabric! You can honestly make the strips however thick you like, but I prefer to eyeball at about 1 inch or a little bigger. Now when you make your strips you are going to stop at the top so as to not go through both ends. (remember we want both ends to be connected!) I stop at the top at about 3/4 of an inch.

Once you’re done making strips and you unfold the sheet you will have something that looks like this…

Now the next part is important!  You are going to now start making one continuous strip, so we can’t cut where we don’t want to.  Aside from the first cut (the end that is) we are going to cut by two’s…. by that I mean just like what you see below.

You can pretty much think of this like a windy road. You’re cutting by two’s because you have to “turn a corner”.  So once you cut this… follow that corner around the bend, down to the other side… then cut another two. By repeating this all the way until the end you WILL have a continuous piece of fabric yarn that you can then ball up like so!

 Now once that’s done you can get started on your rug! I went with a circular rug so it would have a really simply crochet pattern with a general increase each row so your piece will lay flat. It’s best to use a large crochet hook and really don’t crochet to tight!

I would advise using a stitch marker or something to mark the beginning of your round, since you do not join the rounds in this!

The pattern would go something like this:

Start with a magic ring (as shown here if you don’t know!)

Row 1: SC (single crochet) 6 in the ring. Then pull ring tight so you have a nice circle!

Row 2: SC 2 in each SC stitch, end with 12 stitches (DO NOT JOIN!)

*Next you begin your increase pattern

Row 3:  *SC 2 in first stitch, SC 1 in the next. *Continue pattern until the end of the round

Row 4: *SC 2 in the first stitch, SC 1 in each of the next 2 stitches. *Continue pattern until the end of the round

Row 5: *SC 2 in the first stitch, SC 1 in each of the next 3 stitches. *Continue pattern until the end of the round

As you can see from above,  at the end of each round you are always going to increase the number of stitches!  So row 6 you are going to have 4 SC stitches in between each of your 2 SC’s in one stitch!  This way your work will be flat!

I will update more as this project progresses. Also in a later post….more updates on my other WIP project…my crochet fusion quilt. Did I mention I have crafting ADD?, Yep. I do. 🙂