My DIY Moss Rug Bath Mat

After watching this video, I really wanted a moss rug. Not a rug made out of real moss, a rug made out of regular rug materials that looked like a soft bed of moss. The rug in this video is quite large, but I had neither the space nor the patience for an undertaking of that magnitude. I opted for something smaller, knowing that the one place I actually needed a rug at the moment was the bathroom. Tired of stepping out of the shower onto the tile and immediately dripping a puddle all over the floor, I set out to craft a little moss rug bath mat.

Now, the bathroom that this rug was going to be in is very small. The shower is a stall not a tub, and it is tiny. I didn’t want the rug taking up the whole floor, so I made it quite small (although maybe too small). Anyway, it looks super fun and it dries my feet, and that’s all I ask for.

I’ve been on a ‘don’t buy stuff’ kick lately, because I have so much stuff, especially craft supplies, and I do not want to have to organize any more stuff. With this in mind, I wanted to make the rug out of things I already had in my house. I only half succeeded because I did buy a latch hook and mat, but for the actual moss on the rug, I used cut up T-shirts and some cotton yarn I already had.

Preparing for the project

I decided to make this moss rug bath mat, and sketched a few ideas for it. I did some Googling to figure out the easiest way to make a rug and landed on the good old latch hook method, which I definitely did as a kid, though I don’t remember what I made.

Having no latch hook supplies, I did order a small mat and a hook off of Amazon. You can find the mats pretty affordably in a variety of sizes (and the same for the hooks, actually).

I laid out the mat, and outlined some basic areas for different types of ‘moss’ with a marker. Then I decided I didn’t like that pattern and outlined some different areas.

Now, I needed a lot of material to actually do the latch hook. Since this is a bath mat, I wanted something absorbent but fast drying. I did some more Googling, and landed on cotton as my fabric of choice. This was perfect as I had a bunch of old cotton T-shirts! I took the one green T-shirt I had and cut it up into strips to try it out. This worked great (you can find info on making your own T-shirt yarn at fiberartsy.com). I got to work hooking, and thought it was looking pretty good.

We need more yarn

But I had nowhere near enough yarn for the entire rug. This was fine, as I didn’t want the whole mat to be one color anyway, but it meant I had to dye a bunch of white T-shirts various shades of green.

At first I tried using food coloring, as some sources said this would work on cotton. However, after I tried it, I found other sources confirming that it does not work at all. Cotton won’t absorb much if any of the food dye, and you just come out with the palest ghost of the color you wanted. So I bought some actual fabric dye.

I cut up the T-shirts before dying them, I don’t really remember why, threw them in a pot with the dye, followed the dye directions, etc, etc, and ended up with some nice T-shirt yarn in a few lighter shades of green. After letting the yarn dry, I was ready to get back to latch hooking.

This took a while, but was pretty much just your average latch hooking experience. I found it helpful to hook strands of yarn around the outside of each section first, so I didn’t accidentally add more yarn in that color than I wanted to. 

As I went along, I decided I didn’t want the rug to be just shades of green. I added in a little brown with some cotton yarn I already had. The yarn was thinner than the T-shirt yarn, so I doubled it up on itself.

Finishing it up

Tennessee helped a lot. I almost made a ghillie suit instead.

When I was finished, I cut out around the edge of the rug, leaving a few inches of empty mat. I folded these edges under the bottom of the rug, and sewed them down with my cotton yarn. I cut out a piece of anti-slip rug mat and put that underneath to avoid the mat sliding. (This wasn’t attached, the rug just sits on top of it)

And done! I think it looks nice, and it works great. No more puddles on the bathroom floor, and the fabric dries quickly. When I step out of the shower, I can imagine I’m a of forest creature stepping from beneath a waterfall onto the mossy forest floor. Magical.