Tutorial for reclaiming an area rug from your plain old carpet

OK, I think the long title is telling you all about today's post. Well, there is one thing you can't tell from the title. This is a No-SEW project. It is actually a very simple process. Many of you would not need a tutorial for this project. This is just kinda memorandum for myself. So I didn't mean to take those photos for sharing here in my blog. I apologize the bad lighting and the low quality of photos. I hope this post will inspire some readers who have a piece of carpet remnant or abandoned old rug.

I had this pretty good size of plain carpet remnant. It came with this house.  It was always lying around in the corner of our family room. I couldn't throw this away since the surface still looks fine except the raw edges were cut unevenly. I have been thinking how I can make it looks nice and usable again. Then one day I thought of framing those rough edges with pretty fabric. And it went pretty easy and quick. But the result was very satisfying. You can use this method to your old rugs as well. If you had a pattern on your rug, I suggest to go with solid fabric for the trim.

First, I trimmed my carpet remnant nicely. The fabric pieces you will need is...

*Two pieces of : 7"x Length of your rug           *Shown in the picture below.
**Two pieces of : 7"x (Width of your rug +2")     **This fabric is not shown in the picture below.

Fold and press all four pieces of fabric like in this picture below. Fold 1/2" on both edges and fold it in half.

Starting with the long side (the length) first.  Slide the carpet (rug) edge between a folded fabric piece. Glue the fabric edge onto the carpet surface using a hot glue gun. Work on the wrong side of the carpet as well. After finishing the both long sides, we are moving on to the short sides (the widths).

First, glue the fabric onto the right side of carpet. Leave 1" fabric as a margin on both ends.

Flip the carpet over, then fold the margin in and glue on the wrong side of carpet.

Fold the rest of fabric and cover the previous fold. Glue the fabric along the widths to finish all the framing.

The corner is neatly done.

That's all. Here you have a "NEW" beautiful area rug.

If you had a colored rug, that would be more fun to pick a fabric (or two) for framing. I used a medium weight cotton canvas. Light weight fabric like quilting cottons wouldn't be so easy to work with for this project. I suggest medium to heavy weight home decor fabric.

I enjoyed this project. I made some bath mats with this method. I folded old bath towels and trimmed with fun printed cottons. I hope I won't forget to show you those bath mats sometime. The finished area rug is now lying in the little sitting area in my studio. I love the clean look of this rug. I wish I had some more carpet remnants I could embellish! ;p

This might be the last post in 2012. I have a lot of fun plans and projects for 2013. You will see more tutorials and patterns. And also I would love to have some activities that you can involved in. I want to say thank you to all for supporting my blog and encouraging me not to stop creating through the year. I am so glad that I dared to start this blog three years ago.

I hope all of you will have a wonderful new year. Thank you so much!

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This is a notice about my Etsy shop. The shop will be closed in January 2013. The exact date for reopening isn't decided yet. I will announce it in this blog, twitter, and facebook. Some products will show again and some won't. The shop will be closed on Dec.31.