How to Make Terry Cloth Bath Mat

This is a great lesson for working with heavyweight fabrics or fabrics of different weights that you wanna put together into a project. And this project is a terrycloth bath mat. And I got the inspiration for it from those carpet tiles. They're just square carpet tiles that come in all different colors and patterns and you often see them mixed and matched and put into all sorts of different arrangements. So I thought it would be cool to do that with circles and to come up with something really fun for your bathroom. So that is where this all sort of came from. And I made mine into a flower shape but you could certainly do the same technique and make, you know, any sort of shape that fits your bathroom decor. So now I'll show you how to sew it together. For this bathmat project, I'm actually working with three different fabrics. And the first one I wanna talk about is gripper fabric. It's a really cool product, and you might see it in the fabric store as this Slipper Gripper product. And this is actually just a 12-by-14-inch piece. So you would use this for like the bottom of footie pajamas or socks or something of that nature, hence the feet design. But for this, we want something a little bit bigger. You could certainly go out and buy, you know, six packages of this. But it's really more cost-effective to do gripper fabric by the yard. And that's what this is. And you can see it has some little raised bumps on it. And that is what keeps you from slipping. So I've also seen some people. This is a really funny tip. They will take some duck cloth or heavyweight canvas and actually put dots of puff paint on it and let it dry, of course. And then you kind of have made your own gripper fabric. So you can certainly try that out if you like and have fun with it. But I find it much easier and more time-saving to buy it by the yard. So once you have that, then you wanna choose your terrycloth for the outer fabric. And I've chosen a really nice organic cotton French terrycloth. And you can see, just the texture of it, it is so nice and buttery under your feet. It's also pretty lightweight. So I've chosen to actually add an interlining to this, which is a microfiber terry soaker fabric. And that's how it's sold, as soaker fabric. For obvious reasons. This is why we're putting it in the inside of our circles. And it's gonna add a little bit more loft and also, of course, the moisture wicking properties. So once you have all of these. Oh, I should mention too that you could certainly use some old bath towels and recycle them into this project. Or you could use some swim towels. That would be kind of fun to add a little color splash into your bathroom. You could choose one color terrycloth for the whole rug. You could switch it out. Again, you know, you're the designer. So have fun with it. So once you have all of your fabrics chosen, you need to cut a bunch of circles. And I've chosen to do an 11-inch-diameter circle for this. And the way I came up with that is because I happen to have an 11-inch plate. And it makes it so easy to use a plate as a template. Rather than, you know, figuring out your compass or however you wanna do it. And it makes sure that all of your circles are going to be the exact same size of course. So I've found a plate and I didn't want my markings to transfer to the plate. So I just covered it with plastic wrap and that keeps your plate nice and clean and ready to use when you're done. So after you sorta prep your plate. Really simply just mark ark your circles. I'm using, you know, a permanent marker here. You could certainly use a pencil or whatever, but I like to see what I'm doing. So once you've done that, cut out all of your circles. And the featured bathmat that I had in the flower shape has seven circles. So just, you know, map out your area that you want to, you know, place your bathmat. You could even use it as a laundry mat, you know, in front of your washer and dryer. That would be really cute. So just kind of map it out. Figure out how many you need of each color and cut everything out. And then you're gonna have your three pieces here for each circle. Now this is where the nightmare begins. Because you have this really lightweight, nice terry. You have your little heavier weight plush terry. And then you have your gripper fabric, which is obviously going to grip anything it comes in contact with, including these other fabrics. So there's a lot to contend with here. So I tried this many different ways. I pinned, pinned, pinned, pinned, pinned, everything. And I still had problems under the presser foot with slipping outta place. And you know, it was kind of a nightmare. What I really loved was temporary spray adhesive. You could certainly use permanent spray adhesive for this step as well, because basically we want to make sure that this fabric and this fabric become one. So we're gonna give this a light spray. You wanna protect your surface. And then make sure you're going wrong side down And just smooth it out a little bit. And magically, these are now one piece. Makes your life so much easier. So once we have these two together, we go right side down and match up our gripper. Now, like I said, the gripper is going to kinda grip this fabric just ever so slightly. Just a little bit tacky. And that's actually going to work in our favor here because then you don't have to put 800 pins in this and stress yourself out over it. I'm just gonna put a couple of pins just to anchor. And make sure we're good to go. And I'm going to actually sew from the gripper fabric side. And that's going to help too. So you're not slipping on this plush. The other thing we wanna do is set up the machine. Now, let me show you what happens when you use your machine with a standard presser foot, just as you would using any other fabric. So I just backstitch a little bit and go around the circle. And what's happening. You can see that the microfiber layer is actually falling out of place. Which, now those layers are one, remember, with the spray adhesive. And it's pushing that fabric away from the gripper fabric. So to remedy this, you can certainly just go really slow and continue stopping yourself and repinning, but who wants to do that right? So what I'm gonna do is swap out the standard foot for a walking foot. And you probably have seen a walking foot before, and thought, what is that giant contraption? And they all pretty much look, you know, similar to this. But, of course, each manufacturer is going to have a little bit different one. So just read the instructions that come with the foot to learn how to install it. But what it is is it has this mechanism on the bottom here that's going to guide all of these fabric layers together as one. And you'll see when I start using it how it actually does that. And it's the coolest thing ever. Traditionally, these are used with quilting or, you know, doing some edging on pretty much a quilt, place mat, something like that that has batting in between it. But it works really well for this application. So you can see how the top of the foot is moving the gripper fabric while the feed dogs are moving the microfiber fabric below. So everything is being moved under the presser foot together in its own little sandwich. And I'll show you how it looks. Everything is perfectly aligned and we're right on our pinpoints here. We don't have any bunching up like we did before. So a walking foot is really worth the investment for a number of different projects. But really helpful in this scenario. So you want to sew all of your circles and leave yourself an opening for turning, of course. And I have one here that I've turned right side out and my opening is really small, just about two inches or so. And this is a little bit tricky too, because when you are closing and opening on a circle you wanna make sure that you don't have a little, you know, squared-off area here. So I just carefully push all the layers in and pin. I just use like three pins here. And I do my little corners first. You wanna make sure that those two layers are still acting as one. So you don't have bunching up there. And I'm pinning from the gripper fabric side because I'm going to sew from that side when I top stitch this together. And reason being is that when you put your gripper fabric through the machine, it's obviously going to grip to the machine. So that's another thing I learned the hard way. You wanna go from the gripper fabric side. And I actually just left my walking foot on here for the top stitching. And I found that it guided the gripper fabric through just perfectly fine. But if you're not using a walking foot, you could certainly put some clear tape on the underside of your presser foot or you could use a Teflon foot and that'll just help the gripper fabric go through the machine. So you're gonna top stitch this whole circle and you're gonna do that with every single one of them. And once you have them all top stitched, you're going to arrange your circles. When you're arranging your circles for your bath mat, the thing to really keep in mind is that you want them all touching in a certain point. And, you know, whether you're doing something like this like a flower shape, or you have three rows of three or two rows of five or however you're arranging it, it is fun to, you know, offset them a little bit. So they're not just, you know, all symmetrical. And that's going to ensure that you have small gaps in between each one, rather than large, you know, gaps. 'Cause the whole point is that, you know, we're protecting the surface and making something a little decorative. So once you've arranged them, make sure that they're fitting quite tightly next to each other. And we're going to hand sew at each one of these intersections using a ladder stitch or a slip stitch. Whatever invisible stitch you like to use. And I'm working with a double thread strand here just to ensure, again, the durability factor. And I just, you know, layer everything. Lay everything out on a large work surface, or even on the floor if you have to, depending on the size you're working with. And I just go from one terrycloth edge to the other. And hide your little knot in between the layers. And I'm working with red thread here, as you can see, but you can certainly use matching thread or even invisible thread if you want to, to make sure that nobody's going to ever see your handiwork. Just keep going until everything is secure. And you can go over this two and three times just to make sure that this isn't going to fall apart and then just go back through. And knot off your thread tails. I just go back just a little bit to make sure that that's good to go. And just knot off. And you're gonna do that, like I said, at every intersection. Cut off your excess thread. And you're all finished. So now you have some great tips for working with heavyweight fabrics.