Make your own nautical themes Rope Rug: DIY Project

As you gaze through the pages of the glossy home magazines that have thumped their way through your letterbox, as the sun climbs higher in the sky each day, and as your thoughts drift to those wonderfully bright and stripy nautical themed photoshoots contained within their pages, you might just want to bring a little of the seaside straight into your living room. With an easy DIY rope rug project straight from our friends at Murator magazine in Poland and this gallery we’ll show you how.

Items you’ll need:

  • Rope: you can pick this up at a local DIY store or yacht chandlery (if you are near the coast). If not, have a look online. Best option is to go for a reasonably thick diameter rope but one that’s not too course – you want it to look great, but also to feel comfortable underfoot. Length is dependent on the size of rug you want to create, but best to create a cardboard template first and lay out a tape measure in a spiral to determine approximate length… and then make sure you buy a rope longer than that to allow for error.
  • Sharp knife: Stanley knife, strong craft knife or similar. Needs to be able to cut through the rope.
  • Silicone glue: Pick up a tube from the DIY store, make sure you either already have a silicone gun or purchase one as well.
  • Rug backing: Easiest option is to pick up a really cheap circular bathmat or similar from Argos, Dunelm, or similar. This will ensure you have a soft non-scratch backing to your rug that is already sealed/hemmed around the edge.

Method:

  1. On a clean protected surface, lay out your rope, curling it around into a spiral starting form the centre outwards.
  2. Keep checking the size of your spiral against your rug backing by laying the rug backing over the top. Once you get to the right size, ideally you’ll cut the rope diagonally so that you taper the end and it can be glued flat against the next layer in. You can also just cut it straight, but you will need to seal the end regardless to prevent the rope from fraying.
  3.  Next lay the rug backing down (the right way up). Locate the middle and start to glue it both to the rug backing, but also within the spiral so that each rotation is glued to the layer before. Be cautious. You’ll need more glue between the rope and the rug backing, but you don’t want too much in-between the layers or it might bleed up through the rope strands and be visible.
  4. Leave to dry – you may want to pin the last layer to the previous one to ensure the rope rug dries as a tight spiral. You could also lay a large heavy book on top to ensure the rope rug dries flat.
  5. Stand back and admire.