I made a rug!

Yes, the quilt is DONE!! It deserves a separate post though...

I wanted a rug "to define" our living room ever since we moved into our current apartment (more than a year ago...). We have one big room that serves as our living room, kitchen, home office, and sewing studio. I obsessed with furniture organization since we moved in order to define different areas, and a rug could help. We couldn't find anything we liked, we kept saying everything was too expensive to fit in our budget but I think we have become DIY snobs - unless we make it ourselves, we don't like it.

Searching Pinterest I found some tutorials for a DIY rug but most used an existing plain rug (we do have it in IKEA here, but it costs double than in the US) or some sort of crochet pattern I assumed would take me forever to complete and won't fit our budget anyway. I didn't want a project that was too complicated or used many products I didn't have on hand. Instead I aimed for simplicity, assuming the "perfect rug" would be one I can complete in a reasonable amount of time (and money). Eventually we had the idea to use a thick piece of fabric on top of an anti-slip mat. We searched for the perfect print but we couldn't find anything we liked and was thick enough for a rug, so we decided to paint ourselves a plain piece of fabric. We chose this rug from Urban Outfitters as our inspiration (I say "we" because it was a mutual decision), after scrolling Pinterest for black and white geometrical rugs for HOURS.

I used a regular pencil to draw the pattern (with my quilting ruler) and black acrylic paint. Despite initial concerns (the first two lines turned out awful) we both like the end result, and it took only a few hours to finish the entire thing. I should say that the cheap acrylic I used changed the texture of the fabric so it isn't soft as the unpainted parts, but I know there are some paints designed to be used on textiles (I couldn't find any). I'm very happy with this project, it was way easier than I expected and the impact it makes in our small home is incredible. 

Costs:

Anti-slip mat: 39 ISL (10.61 $)

fabric: 68 ISL (18.5 $)

paint: 20 ISL (5.5 $)

Total: 127 ISL (34.61$)