Tutorial – Page 2 – Grocery Shrink

No Sew Bedskirt

By Angela on May 21, 2015

When we were redoing our room last month, I was surprised how many little details make a space feel finished. The bedskirt is one of those.

Master Bedroom After

Our previous bed had a wooden frame that hid the box springs. We were ready for a new look, so kept the headboard only and put the bed on metal rails. I needed a fast, frugal solution for hiding the box springs.

I found an easy answer in 2 twin flat sheets from Walmart. ($4.88 each.) 1 sheet would have done it, but then there would have been sewing involved.

Here’s a quick video, explaining how it works. Something more permanent could be made with velcro and hot glue. I plan to do that soon. The pins work well, but my kids come and stand by the bed to talk to me in the night and step on the bed skirt–which pulls out the pins… Changing the sheets was easier than I thought. Just by remembering the skirt was a little fragile I could work around it without pulling it all apart.

master bedroom 1

Moss Covered Monogram

By Angela on May 20, 2015

In the Cozy Minimalist class, I learned that plants breathe life into the room. My family room is land locked and light deprived. Real plants wouldn’t survive a week in this space, so a little creativity is in order. (The plants in the picture are fake IKEA plants. Cute…but too small for the space? I’m looking for a frugal way to overflow that shelf with green.)

painted fireplace moss letter

After some looking around pinterest, I thought a moss covered letter on the new painted fireplace would be perfect. The space above my fireplace isn’t huge–22 inches total. So I opted with a 15 inch letter. I could have gone SUPER frugal and cut a letter out of cardboard. In the end I paid $5 to have a ready made letter because I wanted the depth. you can see the side of it from the front door and it looks better to be thick and sturdy.

The fireplace still looks bare, so I’m thinking about garland options. Maybe I’ll make this when we drive to Colorado. Or this.

moss letter 9

This project took me 1 hour including driving to Hobby Lobby to get the letter $5 (50% off from $9.99.) And the moss sheet $6 (40% off coupon from $9.99.) I also used scissors and a marker. The project would have gone faster, but those sheets are extremely sticky and I kept getting caught in it like a mouse in a sticky trap. I regret my decision not to film it, because I think it would have gone viral for how ridiculous it was….you’ve been warned.

moss letter a

Unfold your moss sheet and place your letter in the center. I drew the lines on it with the marker and cut along it with scissors. Then peeled off all the paper backing.

moss letter b

I pressed the letter onto the sticky moss. At this point, it’s good to mention that you want the RIGHT side of your letter face down. This is pretty important if your letter is directional, like a B. Thank goodness that C’s are good both directions because I wasn’t super careful. As you go, SAVE YOUR SCRAPS. You’ll need them until the very end. Then if you want, you can throw the mess away.

moss letter c

Then I started pressing up the moss and sticking it around the outside, trimming off the excess so it would lay flat agains the wall. Where it curved, I snipped it to the letter then folded it up overlapping the excess while keeping it smooth. The cool thing about this project is the moss is so forgiving. If you end up with a hole you can just stick a scrap in it and no one will be able to tell.

moss letter d

To go around the inside curves I snipped it like the outside, but this time instead of overlapping it left gaps of triangles. moss letter 1

moss letter 2

I just cut little triangle scraps and stuck them in to fill in the gaps.

moss letter 3

The corner ended up with a triangle flap. I just cut it off flush.

moss covered letter 7

TaDa!

moss covered letter 5

I went super fancy on the hanger and hot glued a paper clip to the back. It’s such a lightweight piece that a paperclip is just the right thing.

Fireplace and moss letter

The Risk of Painting Brick

By Angela on May 18, 2015

There are a lot of things I love about our family room. It’s open concept so we can see the kitchen from our comfy sofa. It’s big with lots of options for furniture placement. It has yummy hand scraped hardwood floors and French doors leading out to a sunroom and deck.

The room has a unique fireplace that was constructed from the bricks removed during the demolition of the old stock yards in downtown Kansas City. The bricks are a good color tone with enough variation to give texture and interest without being gaudy.

The room is dark. It’s landlocked and even during the lightest part of the day, needs a light on for normal activity. Even with the lights on it feels dark.

It was even darker before we painted over the dark olive beige with a pale gray. Painted the trim white, and took down the wall between the family room and the kitchen.

My gut has been telling me the dark brick has to go if I ever want a light and bright space. It’s so massive that it absorbs a ton of light, and the inside is stained black from soot. I’ve tried several methods to clean it up, but it’s deep into the porous surface of the brick. I’ve lightened it some but the stain is still there.

In a last ditch effort to save the brick, I decided to paint the french doors white to bring in as much light as I can. It helped a bunch and every time I walked by my heart gave a little leap of joy. As much as the little things we did improved the space, it only made the dark brick stand out more…and not in a good way.

When we took down the wall between the rooms, there was an unfortunate seam in the brick never meant to see the light of day. I was imagining seeing the cute exposed brick wall from the front doors….but that seam is NOT cute. We plan to cover it with a floor to ceiling chalkboard with a wide white frame all the way around. SOOOO since I was going to cover it up completely, I took a risk and tested a white wash technique first.

I loved it and hated it at the same time. My mom told me it looked dirty, but my online friends from the Cozy Minimalist class told me it was beautiful. I finally got up the nerve to start on the part that would be seen.

I spent a few hours painting, and then wore out. You can see the top left corner and the inside has been done. At this point, I was pretty sure my mom was right and I had ruined it. Then I remembered The Nester telling us, “You can’t ruin something you already hate.” It took several weeks for me to find the nerve to finish the project. I decided if I hated the whitewash look I would paint it solid white.

The paint I chose tends to settle during the painting process, so the fireplace got lighter and lighter as I went on. I had to go back over the places I started with to make it blend with the rest of the brick. It ended up lighter overall than I had planned, but I love it anyway.

This is just an iphone picture, and doesn’t do the space justice. The brick finally feels like it goes with the rest of the room. I quick made a moss covered monogram to hang on the new whiter brick, and have plans to style up the space more with inspiration from here and here.

I’m KEEPING the original brick on the backside where it is exposed in the dining room. Here’s a picture of the back side of the fireplace back during our construction phase. I can’t believe I’ve never taken a picture from this direction “finished.” Ok, we aren’t finished yet, my buffet table on the brick wall is still those stacked flooring boxes with a tablecloth on it. But we’ve made progress since this.

Choosing the type of paint for the brick was a challenge. Brick is hard to strip paint from, no matter what. Latex paint CAN be removed from brick with this stripper or this one, but latex paint is not heat friendly. My fireplace has a gas insert, and while it is too expensive for us to use right now, we have hopes one day to make it more efficient. We didn’t want to permanently eliminated our option of ever using the fireplace again. I thought about using latex only on the outside and using heat proof grill paint on the inside, but it only came in black. Painting the massive inside of the fireplace black would fight against my goal of light and bright.

While searching for paint that is heat friendly, I came across milk paint. Milk paint is permanent on brick. It soaks into the pores and becomes one with the material. It doesn’t bubble, crack or peel when exposed to high temperatures. And unlike traditional lyme white washing, milk paint won’t rub off on hands or clothes once it’s cured. Going with this option meant never being able to go back to raw brick again. That’s scary for me, because I’m kind of fickle when it comes to decorating. I took the risk because letting fear trap me into keeping a look I hated was worse than never being able to go back.

There are lots of different brands of milk paint. I chose this one because it keeps longer than the rest while still being REAL milk paint. Some milk paints are only good for 24 hours after mixing up, but this one lasts 6 weeks. (I loved having a time limit though, or I might not have finished even now.) The paints that are “like” milk paint but not really made with milk, I didn’t trust. I wasn’t sure they would have the heat proof quality I was looking for.

The paint instructions say to mix it equal proportions with the powder and water. I did that first to make sure the powdered mixed up well, then added 2x more water for a whitewash look. My finished formula was 1/2 cup paint powder to 1 1/2 cups water. I brushed it on with a natural bristle brush, stippling it into the texture when necessary, then used an old flour sack tea towel to wipe it off. The wiping off part was key to an even texture and removing brush strokes.

Just for fun, here’s a before and after:

P.S. Thank you for making it safe for me show you my imperfect house and imperfect pictures. I’m holding back the urge to point out all the flaws. I know no apology is necessary–because we’re friends like that.

Spending Freeze Day 8: Getting Creative

By Angela on January 8, 2015

Having money to spend gives choices. Sometimes having too many choices can make it harder to make a decision. During our spending freeze, we have the ease of few choices :). Example to follow:

We had to take down our Christmas decorations this month. Sniff, sniff. I didn’t get some of them up until December 23rd…..we were kind of slow. So taking them down right away seemed too fast. I wasn’t emotionally ready for Christmas to be over…..

…until I was. Then I imagined red hearts everywhere and thought, “Why not take Christmas down and put some Valentine stuff up?” Never mind that Valentine’s Day is 38 days away, or that we have never decorated for Valentine’s Day before.

Add that we are in a spending freeze and don’t have any decorations from previous years….because we don’t decorate for anything but Christmas.

I smelled a challenge. Not to win a spot in Better Homes and Gardens….bwa ha ha ha….No. What you are about to see definitely doesn’t rise to that level. I just wanted to make the place feel festive for the kids.

I found a foam wreath form that used to have cotton balls hot glued to it. It looked cute on pinterest, but it looked dumb when I did it. So I pulled the cotton balls off and ended up a wreath form covered with hardened glue and fuzz. It was too expensive to throw away and too ugly to sell at a garage sale so I put it in the pile that makes my office look really trashy.

I had a spool of pearl edged burlap ribbon left over from a wedding shower and wrapped the wreath. My plan was to just wrap it up and hang it up…but I ran out of ribbon :(. My first though was to run to the store and grab another spool. At most it was going to be $2…..but spending freeze.

Not enough ribbon….so the remnants of glue and cotton balls still shows.

Aak. So I looked around my office to see if I had anything red. I found some long strips of polar fleece left over from a blanket project.

Without measuring I folded it over to be able to cut a semblance of a square

Rounded the edges

Cut a spiral

And rolled it up (starting with the outside edge) to make roses. At the end, the round part in the middle glued over the bottom to hold it all together. Then I spent about 20 minutes making a bunch of them. It went fast, because I didn’t measure anything. The un-uniformity of it all made a nice effect.

I love how it turned out!

Valentine Entry Wreath

I hung it in my entry over a piece of fake Ikea fur and a couple of candles. This pic doesn’t do it justice…

We found small bits of Valentine candy and thought to make centerpieces out of some Dollar Tree candle glasses I had on hand. But the tiny amount of candy looked stupid. And then the boys ate all the candy. So we tried something else.

Black eyed peas with a votive nestled in. A scrap of burlap ribbon and a hand stitched felt heart. It isn’t what we’ve always dreamed about as far as decorations go but it was 100% from stash and is a little bit festive.

To add to the festive, we added some of the same hearts to our Ikea plants over the stove.

These are my favorite.

If I can find some red construction paper, I’d like to make these.

How to Make Homemade Fortified Almond Milk

By Angela on October 7, 2014

I turned my nose up at vegan milks for years. Real milk has protein and calcium, it’s affordable, and tastes great. Why mess with a good thing?

Then I met up with the symptoms of lactose intolerance. Sometimes I could eat dairy products without consequence and sometimes I would be doubled over in pain. It was like a dietary game of Mumblety peg.

Almond milk sparked my interest when I found out it only has 30 calories per cup, is low in carbs and tastes pretty good. It boasts a good serving of calcium, but only because it is added artificially. This is not a drink for babies or kids unless the diet has other rich sources of fats or protein.

Almond milk makes good smoothies, custards, cream soups, cream gravy, and fettuccini sauce. It costs about $3 for a half gallon, or $6 a gallon. The cost is about 50% more than regular milk. My children do not show signs of lactose intolerance or milk allergy so I do not feed them almond milk.

It’s not hard to make homemade almond milk and homemade costs quite a bit less than store bought–PLUS Almond flour is a by-product of almond milk production. That’s good news for low carb and gluten free bakers everywhere.

At Costco, almonds are $15 for 3 pounds. (Or almonds that haven’t been treated with fungicide are available at Trader Joes for $6 a lb.) It takes 2 oz of almonds to make a half gallon of milk. So one 3 lb bag of almonds makes 24 half gallons (plus almond flour) at $.62 each. If you want fortified almond milk that has the same nutrition as milk, you will want to add 8 calcium, magnesium, vitamin d3 tablets.

Adding vitamins adds to the cost slightly. These tablets* are $.07 each and I would need 8 of them to create a homemade nutritional profile comparable to store bought almond milk. Homemade fortified almond milk is $1.18 per half gallon vs $3.28 for store bought for a savings of $2.10.

Here’s how to make your own almond milk.

Measure 1/4 cup of almonds into a class cup and cover with twice as much water. 1/4 cup of almonds makes 1 quart of milk. 1/2 cup makes half a gallon–the same as in the typical grocery store carton. Let stand for 8 hours or overnight.

After 8 hours, drain your almonds, then place in a blender. Add a generous pinch of sea salt and any supplements or flavors (like vanilla and honey or stevia) you are adding. I used 4 calcium tablets so each cup of milk would have 30% RDA of calcium, plus magnesium and vitamin D3.

Cover with just enough fresh water to keep the blades running smoothly. Too much water will allow the almonds to get away from the blades and not grind as fine.

Blend for a couple of minutes until the nuts are all ground up into tiny bits.

Strain though a nut bag (I use a huge straining bag that I purchased for Kombucha.) Amazon* has nut bags also, or you could use cheese cloth, a clean flour sack towel, or even a coffee filter. They all work, but the nut bag is fastest and easiest. At the end, give the mass of ground nuts a good squeeze to get as much water out as possible.

Pour the strained milk into a canning jar.

Pour in enough fresh water to make a quart, or half gallon–whatever you used enough nuts for.

Voila!

Now scrape the nut meal out of your straining bag (or whatever you used.) Spread it onto a silicone mat, wax paper or parchment. Let it dry thoroughly. (In the dry weather, mine dries overnight.) If it’s humid, you can spread it on a cookie sheet and bake at 200 degrees for 2 hours. Then turn off the oven and let it stay in there for a few hours more. Transfer the dry stuff back to a clean dry blender cup and pulverize it super fine. Use it as you would any almond flour.

Q. How long does the almond milk last?

A. If you are using raw almonds it will go “sour” in 3-4 days. Costco’s almonds are blanched and the milk lasts longer. I’ve gone a week and it was still fine. It’s never lasted longer than that, so I can’t say when it sours.

Q. Shouldn’t you remove the skins from the almonds first?

A. Who’s got time for that? The milk tastes great either way. With the skins on the almonds, the almond flour will have flecks of color in it, compared to commercial almond flour which is just white. I haven’t noticed a difference in performance between the two flours. And the almond milk comes out white either way.

Q. I don’t like almonds. Can I do this with other nuts?

A. Yes. Cashews and sunflower seeds work especially well. Let me know if you try it :).

More questions? Concerns? Put them below. Have you ever made your own almond milk?

* P.S. The Amazon links are for your benefit only and are not affiliate links. As a Missouri resident I am not eligible to be an Amazon Affiliate.

The Best Free Baby Gift Tutorials from Around the Web

By Angela on April 11, 2014

Best Baby Tutorials

To make the list, the tutorials needed to be useful, adorable, free, super easy, use small amounts of materials, and be fast to make. Like I woke up late Saturday morning, and the shower’s at 2pm and I don’t have a gift yet, fast to make.

Click photos to go to the source and get the info:

You’ll need a bib to use as a pattern for this one, but it’s a great concept for using up scraps.

I didn’t use drool bibs until I found these. They didn’t cover up a cute outfit, they MADE a cute outfit.

Drool bibs for the little ladies :).

This scrappy bib tutorial comes with a printable pattern.

When Grant was born I made 2 of these out of Minky. Oh man, everyone was jealous. He still loves them 3 years later. We moved him to a toddler bed instead of a twin bed, so he could still have his sheets.

Both free and paid options at this site. Such cuties!

Baby leg warmers from sweater arms

Baby leg warmers from socks

Baby tights from recycled t-shirts.

Tie onesies! These are fast and easy to make and so cute! Now little man can get all dressed up for church.

Crocheted baby turban. So cute! So fast! And just takes a bit of yarn.

Sherpa lined winter bonnet

Felt and Ribbon Lion Tag Toy

This is a doll quilt, but the same principle works for a baby quilt, start with a 45 inch square backing and batting. You can also, just do strips across instead of a log cabin look. I made one of these for a shower in 2 hours one Saturday morning. It’s an impressive gift that uses scraps and a short amount of time.

Use 1 yard to make a receiving blanket and 2 burp cloths.

Gown made from a t-shirt, printable pattern.

Knotted Baby Hat printable pattern

Crocheted slippers

Crocheted Peacoat (I made one like this and it turned out darling!)

Baby Gown and Hat Set for Free

By Angela on April 10, 2014

Baby gift Idea #2. Are you brave? How brave?

Brave enough to sew with knit? What if it were free? (Well… free according to the craft hoarders rule book.)

Photo Credit ThisMamaMakesStuff.com

If you have a spare t-shirt, you could make a darling infant gown with it and if it doesn’t work out….you only lost the shirt. Even better, The pattern is free from This Mama Makes Stuff. Her tutorial includes how to make the fold over cuffs to protect the babies from their own sharp fingernails.

Here are my sewing with knit tips: Use a ball point needle to keep from tearing permanent holes in the knit. Use a longer stitch length. If you can reduce the pressure on the foot a little to keep the fabric from stretching out of shape. If you have a walking foot, you could do that instead. If things do get stretched out of shape, try to steam them back with the iron. Then just relax and enjoy it. Sewing with knit is my FAVORITE! No basting to ease in seams, it just goes together like a dream. You are going to love it!

If you have some fabric leftover from the shirt make a matching hat:

Free pattern here:

Preemie hat pattern

and a less ink printable pattern PreemieKnottyHat

If the knit is fairly stretchy it will fit a newborn well too. It’s on my 9lb 2 ounce bouncing baby boy above.

So Let’s say the shirt was “free” and you got the gown and hat out of it. And then spent $3.75 on flannel to make a blanket and 2 burp cloths….You could wrap the gown, hat, and burp cloths inside the blanket (using the blanket as “wrapping paper”) and man, what a cute gift you have for less than $5 and about 2 hours worth of sewing. Aren’t you clever?!

How to Make a Noah’s Ark Diaper Cake

By Angela on April 9, 2014

You will need:

2 receiving blankets

4 burp cloths

2 wipes containers

1 small package of size 1 diapers

A children’s book or this

Giraffe teether toy

Washcloth animals (opt.)

Rubberbands

Plastic tray (with metallic finish from Dollar Tree)

Ribbon

Place one wipes container in the middle of the tray. Ignore the two rubberbands you see, you won’t need them. Put one rubber band around the middle to hold the diapers in place. Use half of the diapers to wrap around the wipes container and secure with a rubberband.

Fold a blanket lengthwise until it is just slightly taller than the diapers and wrap it around. There will be a 3-4 inch gap in the center. Use a toy to cover the gap (Or you can use a burp cloth here.) Secure with rubber band.

Make the second tier from the remaining half of the diapers. I just put a rubber band around them to secure them in the same shape they came out of the package. The third tier is just another package of wipes.

At this point you can secure everything together with rubberbands and help Mr. Giraffe hold his head up.

Wrap the top two layers with the remaining blanket and burp cloths. Tie on ribbons to hide the rubber bands. Gently lay the book on top for a roof. (Take the book off for travel since it isn’t secured in place.

I added this little elephant made from 2 baby washcloths. I’m not very good at making these things, so stopped at the 1 elephant. I used these instructions:

And cut the eyes out of a blank white address label.

A One Yard Baby Gift

By Angela on April 8, 2014

I love giving, but sometimes I get gift anxiety. What if they don’t like it? What if they think I’m cheap? What if I spent all that time and it doesn’t come out right?

These feelings could all be avoided if I just went to the store and purchased something and gave them the gift receipt. Sometimes I do that. But this year….oh my! I think everyone and their dog is planning to get married and have a baby this year, then throw a birthday party and invite one of our kids to it. I’m glad they are, and super glad they invited us. Sometimes the gift budget doesn’t stretch.

It just gives a reason to be a little more creative, right?

(I once talked to a friend, who admitted to turning down birthday party invitations for her kids because they couldn’t afford a gift. Hey, y’all. Don’t do that here, mk? I’d rather have you sans gift then let you worry one moment about finances. Our kids have enough stuff and they won’t even notice, I promise.)

So I thought I’d talk about gifting this month a bit and give some ideas for what to do for baby showers, weddings, kid birthdays and such.

First up is this one yard baby gift. You will need 1 yard of flannel; and 1 clean towel or scrap of terry cloth at least 16 x 18 inches. At Hobby Lobby 1 yard of flannel is $5.99 use a coupon and this gift will cost around $3.75 (with tax.) I used knit terry leftover from diaper making. If you use woven terry, use as thin a terry as you can get–cheap towels are perfect.

First find the selvage edge of your fabric that is printed all the way to the edge. Cut an 8 inch strip off this edge, then cut it in half to get two 18 by 8 inch pieces. (These will become 2 burp cloths.)

Cut the remaining fabric into a perfect square. I fold it into a triangle and cut off what’s hanging off–super technical method ;). This will be a perfect receiving blanket between 36 and 34 inches square. Ever notice that the store bought ones are too tiny to be any good? I used to make mine 45″ square, but really those were too big. These are perfect.

Fold the flannel square into fourths, perfectly lining up the corners. Take some time to do this well. Then, find something round and trace a rounded edge on the outer corner. (Double check–no folds here, at all–right?) Then cut it out. (I used a Scentsy top–see the logo? #notanashtray)

Next run the edge of the blanket through a serger adjusted for a rolled hem. No serger? Try this.

At the place where you start and stop, dab a little bit of fray check to keep it from unravelling.

To finish the burp clothes use the 2 flannel 8 x 18 pieces you cut out as a pattern to cut 2 pieces of terry cloth. Place the rectangles right sides together and stitch around the outside with a 1/4 inch seam allowance, leave a 3″ space for turning.

Turn right side out and press. Then top stitch a scant 1/4 inch away from the edge all the way around. This will close up the hole and make these wash and dry nice and flat.

1 yard = 1 receiving blanket and 2 burp clothes for $3.75. (Update 3 years later and flannel is on sale for $2.50–score!)

High Five!

If your budget is a little bigger than that, buy 2 coordinating yards and make double. Or add a toy or an outfit.

I’ll show you what else you can do with these tomorrow.

Crocheted Half Circle Rug

By Angela on April 3, 2014

When I finished the rug, DH said, “What do you think of it?”

What do I think? I love it! I hugged it when you weren’t looking. I did dances around it, took off my socks so I could really feel it under my feet. Knowing how he feels about crochet, I only said, “I think it turned out pretty good. What do you think?”

Do you know what he said? He said, “It’s awesome. And it didn’t really take you that long.”

“And it was free.” I pointed out.

“Um, except for the 3 skeins of yarn and a canvas drop cloth.”

“Those don’t count” (Has he not been to the craft hoarders school of positive thinking?) “No new money spent, means free–duh. Besides I have half the supplies left, so I could make another one and sell it on Etsy to recoup the amount of money I didn’t spend on supplies. So it cost half of free.”

I think he might have rolled his eyes. I feel sorry for him.

I wrote down the pattern after I finished the rug so I plan to make another just to test it and make sure. Might be a few “interesting” parts in the instructions until I work it out for you. A seasoned crocheter won’t have trouble. I adapted the rug pattern from a fine string crocheted vintage doily in my collection.

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Yarn: 3 large skeins (The super huge ones that cost $10 each but go on sale for 50% off all the time–so wait or use a coupon, please) of worsted weight cotton yarn (like wash cloths are made from.) Size P hook. This is enough to make 2 :).

Good to Know: These are in American Crochet Terms

Abbreviations:

ch = chain

ss = slip stitch

sc = single crochet

dc = double crochet

tr = triple crochet

cl = cluster

p = picot

2-dc-cl (or 2-tr-cl)= cluster of 2 dc (or 2 tr). To make cluster, hold back the last lp of each st on hook and work 2 dc or 2 tr) into st or sp specified, then yo and through all 3 lps remaining on hook.

3-dc-cl (or 3-tr-cl) = cluster of 3 dc (or 3 tr). Make as above, working 3 dc 9or 3 tr) insted of 2 and work final yo through 4 loops remaining on hook.)

P3 is a picot made with 3 chains. To make a P3, ch 3 then slip stitch into the 3 ch from the hook.

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Foundation: Ch 10; join with a sl st to form a ring.

Rnd 1: Ch 2, 2-dc-cl in ring, ch 3, [3-dc-cl, ch3] 11 times all in ring; join with a sl st to top of first cl.

Rnd 2: (Sl st, ch 2, 2-dc-cl) all in first ch-3 sp. ch4, [3-dc-cl in next ch-3 sp, ch 4] 9 times. Ch 1, turn.

Rnd 3: (Sl st, ch 2, 2-dc-cl, ch 2, 3-dc-cl) all in first ch-4 sp, ch 2. *[3-dc-cl, ch2] twice all in next ch-4 sp; rep from * around, ch 1 turn.

Rnd 4: (Sl st, ch 3, 2-tr-cl) all in first ch-2 space, ch 5 [sc in next ch-2 sp, ch 5, 3-tr-cl in next ch-2 sp, ch 5] 7 times, sc in next ch-2 space; ch5; 3-tr-cl in final ch2 sp.

Rnd 5: Ch 6, sc in next ch-5 lp, [ch 5, sc in next ch-5 lp, ch 6, sc in next ch-5 lp] around (final sc goes in top of last 3-tr-cl).

Rnd 6: sl-st, ch 2, 2-dc-cl; (ch 2; 3-dc-cl) twice all in first ch-6 lp; * sc in next ch-5 lp; ([3-dc-cl, ch 3] twice, 3-dc-dl) all in net ch-6 lp; rep from * around. sc in top of final ch-5 lp. (May have error at the end.)

Rnd 7: St st in next (sc and cl), (sl st, ch 3, 2 -tr-cl, ch 5, sc) all in first ch-3 sp, * (sc, ch 5, 3-tr-cl) all in next ch-3 sp **, (3-tr-cl, ch 5, sc) all in next ch-3 sp; repeat from * around, end at **

Rnd 8: Sl st in first 2 ch of ch-5, (sl st, ch 1, sc) all in next ch, *ch 5, sc in 3rd ch of next ch-5, ch 5, sc between next 2 cl **, ch 5, sc in 3rd ch of next ch-5; rep from * around, and at ** (except at the end just sc in final st since there aren’t two clusters here.)

Rnd 9: * 7 Dc in next ch -5 lp, sc in next lp**, ch 4, sc in next lp; rep from * around, end at **

Rnd 10: * Ch 3, 3-dc-cl over first 3 dc of 7-dc group, [ch 5, join 3 -dc-cl] twice **, ch 3, sc in next ch-4 sp; rep from * around, and at ** (note: joint cluster means the first stitch of the next cluster is in the same spot as the last stitch of the previous cluster.)

Rnd 11: (Sl st, ch 1, sc, ch 5 sc) all in first ch-3 sp, ch 5, [(sc, ch 5, sc) all in next ch-5 sp, ch 5], [sc in next ch-3 sp, ch 5] twice; *[(sc, ch 5, sc) all in next ch-5 sp, ch 5] twice, [sc in next ch-3 sp, ch 5] twice; rep from * around

Rnd 12: *Ch 1, sc in next sp, [ch 3, sc in next sp] 4 times, ch 1**, sc in next sp; rep from * around, end at **

Rnd 13: (Sl st, ch 1, sc) all in first ch-1 sp, *3 sc in next ch-3 sp, ch 1, (sc, hdc, dc, tr) all in next ch-3 sp, tr in next sc, (tr, dc, hdc, sc) all in next ch-1 sp, ch-3p**, sc in next ch-1 sp; rep from * around

Rnd 14: Sc across front of mat, evenly spacing the stitches. (I took 60 stitches to get across mine.)

At this point it will look a little wonky. Throw it in the washing machine on gentle. This will shrink up the yarn a bit and wet it down so you can block it.

Once it is out of the washer, lay it flat on a towel (or clean carpet) and tug it into shape. Make sure the front edge is perfectly straight and all the picots are pulled out. Let it dry overnight.

At this point, you can use it as is. I chose to add a canvas backer so I’d have something to attach a non-slip liner to.

To make a canvas backer, place the rug on a canvas drop cloth (I chose the stiffest one in my stash).

Cut out the canvas to match the size of the rug (I skipped the picot part and just cut it straight behind them.) Finish the edge with a zig-zag stitch or serge the edge. Then pin the canvas to the crocheted rug. (Don’t skip the pinning part, because crochet stretches and will be a mess if you just try to run it through the machine without pins–trust me, I tried it.)

Use a long stitch and coordinating thread to stitch the rug to the canvas around the edges. This works best if the crocheted side is down towards the feed dogs so the yarn doesn’t get caught in the pressure foot. Also make sure you can see the yarn peeking around the edge, otherwise your backer will show from the front.

If you want to attach a non-slip mat, cut it to fit and then hot glue it to the canvas back.

It will look even better when we get the dishwasher installed and finish the trim under the cabinets, but those things don’t’ affect my enjoyment of the rug in the least! I can see one used as a bathmat or at a bathroom sink too. I’m considering an oval version to go by Heather’s bed….