Coil + Crochet Scrap Fabric Rug DIY
There’s something deeply satisfying about turning a pile of fabric scraps into something beautiful and useful. If you’ve been crafting for a while, you know exactly what I’m talking about — that growing collection of offcuts, old T-shirts, worn-out sheets, and leftover yardage that you just can’t bring yourself to throw away. Today I’m going to show you how to give all of that fabric a glorious second life by making a coil and crochet scrap fabric rug that is sturdy, colourful, and completely one of a kind.
This technique combines two simple crafting methods — coiling and crocheting — to create a flat, tightly woven rug that holds its shape beautifully on the floor. It works with almost any woven fabric or knit jersey, it requires no special equipment beyond a large crochet hook, and the finished result looks like something you’d find in a boutique homewares store. Let’s get into it.
Why Make a Rug From Fabric Scraps?
Before we jump into the how-to, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate why this project is so wonderful.
First, it’s genuinely sustainable. Textile waste is one of the biggest contributors to landfill globally, and even small steps toward reusing fabric at home make a real difference. Every metre of fabric you coil into this rug is a metre that won’t end up in a bin bag.
Second, it costs almost nothing. If you already have fabric scraps, your main investment is a large crochet hook (I use a 10mm or 12mm, which you can pick up very cheaply) and a little bit of your time. If you don’t have scraps of your own, op shops and charity stores are brilliant sources — look for cotton bed sheets, lightweight curtains, and jersey knit clothing in the colours you love.
Third, it’s genuinely beginner friendly. You only need to know one crochet stitch: the slip stitch. That’s it. If you’ve never crocheted before, this is a wonderful entry point because the fabric yarn is chunky and forgiving, your tension doesn’t need to be perfect, and you can see your progress immediately.
Finally, the result is a rug that is thick, cushioned, and durable. Unlike thin woven mats, a coil and crochet rug has real body and will hold up to daily foot traffic for years.
What You’ll Need
Fabric scraps. The more the better. For a rug that measures roughly 50cm x 80cm (about 20 x 32 inches), you’ll need somewhere in the range of 3 to 5 metres of fabric cut or torn into strips. More if your strips are narrow, less if they’re wide. Cotton and cotton blends work beautifully. Stretch jersey from old T-shirts is also excellent because the edges curl inward naturally as you pull, giving you a rounded strip without any preparation. Avoid anything too stiff (like canvas or denim that hasn’t been washed soft) for your first project, as these can be harder to work with.
A large crochet hook. I recommend a 10mm to 15mm hook. The larger your hook, the faster the work goes and the chunkier the finished rug will look. A 12mm hook is a great middle ground.
Scissors. A sharp pair for cutting your strips.
A ruler or cutting mat (optional). Useful if you want consistent strip widths, but not essential.
Thread or a small strip of fabric for joining. You’ll use this to join new strips to old ones as you run out.
Preparing Your Fabric Strips
This is honestly the most time-consuming part of the whole project, but it’s also very meditative. Put on a podcast or your favourite playlist and settle in.
For woven fabrics (cotton, linen, quilting fabric, bed sheets): Cut or tear your fabric into strips approximately 3 to 4 centimetres wide. Tearing works beautifully with woven cotton — just make a small snip at the selvage and then pull firmly. The strip will tear in a perfectly straight line along the grain and you’ll get that lovely frayed edge texture. If you prefer cleaner edges, use scissors or a rotary cutter.
For knit fabrics (jersey T-shirts, stretch cotton, leggings): Cut strips about 2 to 3 centimetres wide, cutting across the grain of the fabric (i.e., across the width of the shirt rather than up the length). When you pull these strips gently, they’ll curl into a rounded cord. No folding, no fraying — they’re self-finishing, which is one of the reasons knit fabric is so satisfying to work with.
Joining your strips together: When you reach the end of one strip, you need to join the next. The simplest method is the diagonal join, also called the invisible join. Place the end of your current strip and the beginning of your new strip at right angles to each other, right sides facing if your fabric has a right side. Sew or tie a small stitch through both layers at the corner, then trim the excess to leave a small diagonal seam. When you pull the strip taut, this join disappears into the fabric roll and you won’t see it at all.
Alternatively, you can simply tie a double knot. This is faster and slightly chunkier, but for a rustic rug it looks perfectly fine and some people actually love the textural interest the occasional knot adds.
As you prepare your strips, wind them loosely into balls so they don’t tangle as you work. Keep colours together if you’re planning a colour-blocked design, or mix them freely if you want a scrappy, eclectic look.
Choosing Your Colour Palette
This is where the fun begins. Because you’re working with scraps, you might feel like you have no control over colour — but you actually have more than you think.
Sort your strips into rough colour families: warm tones (reds, oranges, yellows, pinks), cool tones (blues, greens, purples), neutrals (whites, creams, greys, tans), and darks (navy, charcoal, black, dark brown). Once you can see what you have, you can make intentional decisions about the order in which you introduce colours.
A simple gradient effect — light in the centre, getting progressively darker toward the outer edges — looks sophisticated and is easy to achieve. You can also do colour blocks, alternating sections of different hues, or go fully random for a traditional rag rug look that’s cheerful and eclectic.
If you’re working mostly with scraps from old clothing or household linens, neutral colours with a few bright accents tend to give the most cohesive result even when the fabrics themselves are varied.
The Coil and Crochet Method: Step by Step
Now for the actual making. The method here creates a flat oval or round rug by coiling the fabric strip on itself and using slip stitches to hold each coil against the previous one.
Starting Your Rug
Take the end of your fabric strip and coil it tightly into a small flat spiral — about 4 to 5 rounds, like the centre of a snail’s shell. Hold this coil together between your thumb and forefinger.
Insert your crochet hook through the centre of the coil from front to back. Pull a loop of your fabric strip through. You now have one loop on your hook. This is your starting loop.
Work a few slip stitches through the centre of the coil to secure it. To make a slip stitch: insert your hook into the fabric, pull through a loop, and then pull that loop directly through the loop already on your hook. One stitch made.
Work around the outside of your starting coil, inserting your hook into the gaps between the coils and making a slip stitch each time to join each round of fabric to the one before it. The exact number of stitches isn’t critical — what matters is that the rug lies flat. If it starts to cup or bowl upward, you need more stitches per round. If it starts to ruffle and wave, you have too many.
Working an Oval Shape
If you want an oval rug rather than a round one, start with a chain instead of a coil. Make a chain of however many stitches long you want the centre of your rug to be — for a small bath mat, 10 to 15 chain stitches works well. Then coil your fabric strip around this chain and slip stitch it in place, working around both sides of the chain and curving around at each end to make the oval shape.
As you continue adding rounds, the oval will grow evenly on all sides. The key is to add extra stitches at the curved ends to keep things flat — this is the same principle as working a flat crochet circle, where you increase at regular intervals to prevent cupping.
Continuing to Grow Your Rug
After the first few rounds, working the rug becomes very repetitive and rhythmic. You simply keep coiling your fabric strip against the outer edge of the rug and slip stitching it in place, round after round, until the rug reaches your desired size.
Every few rounds, lay your rug flat on a table and check that it’s lying smoothly. Gently tug and adjust if needed. Fabric rugs have a bit of natural give, so small imperfections will usually relax out when the rug is placed on the floor.
When you run out of a colour and want to introduce a new one, simply join your next strip with the diagonal join method described earlier and continue working. You can change colours mid-round or at the beginning of a new round — both work fine.
Finishing Your Rug
When your rug has reached the size you want, cut your fabric strip, leaving about 10 centimetres of tail. Thread this tail onto a large blunt needle (a tapestry needle or even a large safety pin works) and weave it back through several of the slip stitches along the edge to secure it. Give it a gentle tug to make sure it’s not going anywhere, then trim the excess.
If your rug has any particularly loose or uneven areas around the edges, you can add a final round of slip stitches using a contrasting or complementary colour to neaten it up and give it a finished look. This also acts as a subtle border that frames the rug beautifully.
Tips for a Flat, Professional-Looking Rug
Getting a flat rug is the one area where beginners sometimes struggle, so here are a few tricks that make a big difference.
Work with consistent tension. Try to pull your fabric strip through each stitch with roughly the same firmness each time. Too tight and the rug will curl; too loose and it will be floppy and gap-prone.
Don’t be afraid to rip back. If you notice after a few rounds that the rug is cupping, undo those rounds and add more stitches per round going forward. This isn’t failure — it’s just how you learn your tension.
Block your finished rug. Lay it flat on a clean floor or a large table, spritz it lightly with water, pat it into shape, and let it dry completely. This relaxes the fibres and evens out any slight irregularities. For cotton fabric rugs, you can also run them through a gentle machine wash and then lay them flat to dry.
Use a non-slip mat underneath. This isn’t about technique, but it makes a huge practical difference. A simple rubber non-slip mat placed under your finished rug will keep it in place and protect both the rug and your floor.
Variations to Try
Once you’ve made your first rug, you’ll probably want to make another — and that’s when it gets really fun to experiment.
Try different shapes. Heart-shaped rugs are adorable in a child’s bedroom. A long, narrow runner works beautifully in a hallway. A small round rug is perfect in front of a bathroom vanity.
Add texture. Mixing knit strips with woven strips in the same rug creates interesting variation in texture. You can also braid three strips together before coiling, which gives a thick, chunky, very tactile result.
Use a single fabric type throughout. A rug made entirely from strips of one old bed sheet, using the natural colour variation from fading and washing, has a lovely understated quality that works well in a minimal or Scandi-style home.
Go large. With a very large hook (15mm or bigger) and wide strips, you can make a room-sized rug by joining several completed panels side by side with slip stitches.
Caring for Your Scrap Fabric Rug
One of the best things about this style of rug is how easy it is to clean. Because it’s made from fabric rather than yarn, it can handle a proper wash.
For smaller rugs, machine wash on a gentle or delicate cycle in cold water. Avoid harsh detergents or bleach, which can weaken the fabric strips over time. If the rug has any hand-dyed or vintage fabrics, test for colour fastness first by hand washing a small area.
Larger rugs can be spot cleaned with a damp cloth and mild detergent, or taken to a laundromat with large-capacity machines.
Reshape while damp and allow to dry flat. Avoid putting in the dryer if possible, as the heat can distort the shape — though a short tumble on a low heat setting is usually fine for all-cotton rugs.
Final Thoughts
The coil and crochet scrap fabric rug is one of those projects that rewards you on multiple levels. There’s the satisfaction of using up materials that would otherwise go to waste. There’s the meditative pleasure of the making itself, which is rhythmic and calming once you find your groove. And then there’s the finished object — something genuinely beautiful and useful that you made entirely with your own hands from things you already had.
It also makes a wonderful handmade gift. A rug in someone’s favourite colours, made from fabrics that might even include pieces of meaningful old clothing, is the kind of personalised gift that can’t be bought in a shop.
If you make one, I’d absolutely love to see it. Share your photos and tag me — the colour combinations people come up with never fail to inspire me, and the sheer variety of what’s possible with this one simple technique is endlessly delightful.
Happy making!
