How to Make a Spiral Rug Using an Old Climbing Rope — Trip Reports by Jim Brisbine
There’s a moment every climber knows. You’re coiling a rope after a long day on the wall, and you notice it. A sheath that’s gone fuzzy in too many places, a core that no longer has that satisfying stiffness, a section that took a hard fall and never quite bounced back the same way. The rope that carried you up a hundred pitches has reached the end of its working life. Most climbers cut it up, toss it, or let it collect dust in the garage. I did all three of those things for years, until one rainy October in the Cascades when a tentbound afternoon changed everything.
I’d lugged along a beaten copy of a homesteading book someone had left in a little free library near the trailhead. Somewhere between the sections on canning tomatoes and building a root cellar, there was a short passage about sailors making floor mats from old line. Something clicked. I had three retired ropes sitting in a tub at home, each one sixty meters of colorful memory, and I had a long winter ahead of me. By March, I had a spiral rug on my living room floor that has since become one of the most-commented-on objects in my house.
This post is for the climbers, hikers, and outdoor folks who can’t stand seeing gear go to waste. I’m going to walk you through the entire process, from assessing your rope to finishing the final edge, with all the mistakes I made along the way so you don’t have to repeat them.
Why Climbing Rope Makes a Surprisingly Great Rug
Before we get into the how, it’s worth understanding why climbing rope is such a good material for this project. Modern dynamic climbing ropes are built to absorb enormous energy while remaining flexible, and that combination translates beautifully into a durable, cushioned floor covering.
The nylon and polyester sheath fibers are highly abrasion resistant. A rope that has been dragged across granite and through carabiners for years isn’t going to break down because someone walked on it in socked feet. The round cross-section of the rope creates natural texture and grip, meaning your finished rug will have a non-slip quality without any rubber backing. And the colors — the wild oranges, blues, greens, and reds that climbing rope manufacturers use — give you a naturally patterned piece that looks intentional and striking.
The only real drawback is weight. A full sixty-meter rope rug is not something you’ll be tossing into the washing machine. Plan on spot cleaning it with a sponge and mild soap, or taking it outside to hose it down in warm weather the same way you’d clean the rope in the field.
What You’ll Need
You don’t need much beyond patience and a retired rope, but gathering a few supplies before you start will save you a lot of frustration.
Your retired climbing rope is the obvious centerpiece. A standard sixty-meter rope will make a rug that’s roughly two to three feet in diameter depending on how tightly you coil it and how thick the rope is. Single ropes in the 9.5 to 10.5mm diameter range are the sweet spot. Thinner twin or half ropes work but produce a denser, flatter result. If you want a larger rug, plan on using two or three ropes. My living room piece used two ropes, one a retired Mammut 9.8 and the other an old BD 10.2, and the color contrast between them creates a nice gradient effect as you move from the center outward.
Beyond the rope you’ll need a large curved upholstery needle, sometimes called a curved mattress needle, in the three to five inch range. A straight heavy gauge needle can work but makes the sewing portion significantly more awkward. You’ll want a spool of waxed linen thread or heavy-duty nylon thread in a color that either matches or complements your rope. I’ve used both black and natural linen, and both look good.
A sharp knife or rope cutter is necessary for trimming the ends, and a butane lighter is essential for sealing the cut ends of nylon rope to prevent fraying. A pair of pliers can be helpful for pulling the needle through tight sections. That’s genuinely all you need.
Step One: Preparing the Rope
Start by cleaning your rope if it hasn’t been cleaned recently. Fill a bathtub with cool water and a tiny amount of mild soap — the same stuff you’d use to wash the rope normally. Submerge the rope, work it gently through the water to loosen dirt and chalk, then rinse thoroughly. Hang it in a shaded spot to dry completely before you begin. Working with a damp rope isn’t a disaster, but the finished rug will be slightly easier to shape when the fibers are fully dry.
Once clean and dry, inspect the entire length. If there are any sections with significant damage — core shots, major sheath abrasion, soft spots that feel different from the rest of the rope — decide now whether you want to incorporate them into the middle of the rug where they’ll be hidden and under less stress, or cut them out entirely. For ropes with a fall factor decommissioning rather than physical damage, the whole length is usually fine to use. For ropes with localized damage, cut out the worst sections and plan your design accordingly.
If your rope has a middle mark, that’s a handy reference point for centering. If not, don’t worry about finding the exact middle unless you want to start your spiral precisely at the midpoint and work outward from both directions, which is an advanced variation I’ll touch on later.
Step Two: Beginning the Spiral
The foundation of the rug is a tight coil, and getting this coil right is probably the most critical part of the whole project. A loose or uneven starting coil will cause the rug to buckle and warp as it grows.
Take one end of the rope and create a loop about four inches in diameter, essentially a small circle no bigger than your fist. Hold this loop between your thumb and forefinger and begin wrapping the rope around it, keeping each new layer of rope tight against the previous one. You’re working flat — think clock face rather than ball of yarn. Every new section of rope should be touching the previous section along its entire length, sitting side by side like coiled garden hose.
After you’ve built up about three full rotations, it’s time to start stitching. Thread your curved needle with about two feet of waxed linen thread and tie a sturdy knot at one end — I use a double overhand. Push the needle sideways through the rope, going between two strands of the coil and emerging on the other side. Pull the thread taut. Now move the needle to the seam between the current row and the previous row, push through again at a slight angle so you’re catching both sections of rope with the thread, and pull taut again. What you’re doing is essentially a whip stitch that locks each row of rope to the one inside it.
This process is slow at first. Your hands will get used to the motion, but expect the first few inches to take longer than later sections. Don’t rush. A loose stitch here in the center will create visible gaps that you’ll spend the rest of the project trying to ignore.
Step Three: Building Outward
Once you have a solid starter coil roughly six to eight inches in diameter and well stitched, the work enters a satisfying rhythm. You coil, you stitch, you coil, you stitch. Keep a firm, even tension on the rope as you lay each new row. If you let the tension slack, you’ll notice the rug wanting to curve upward at the edges, creating a bowl shape. If you over-tension, it will curl the opposite way. The goal is perfectly flat.
Every four to six inches of new coil, stop and add a few stitches. I found that stitching too infrequently let the rope shift before I could lock it in place. Some makers stitch every couple of inches, which produces a very firm, tight result. I prefer a slightly less frequent stitch because it lets the rug have a little movement and flex underfoot.
When your thread runs out, simply tie a new length onto the tail of the old one with a square knot, pull the knot tight, and tuck it between the rope strands where it will be invisible. The knots add zero structural weakness at the scale we’re working with here.
Step Four: Managing Rope Transitions
If you’re using one rope, you’ll have a single end to manage at the center and a single end to manage at the outer edge. If you’re using multiple ropes, you’ll need to join them at some point in the middle of the rug.
Joining two ropes mid-rug is simple. When you reach the end of your first rope, don’t cut it — let it run out naturally. Place the beginning of your second rope alongside the end of the first, overlapping by about four inches so both run parallel through the same stretch of coil. Stitch through both simultaneously for this transition section. The overlap section will be slightly thicker than the rest, but once stitched it’s barely noticeable, especially since it falls somewhere in the middle rows of the spiral. After four inches of overlap, you can let the first rope end be folded back and stitched down flush against the neighboring row.
I actually find these joins aesthetically pleasing when the two ropes are different colors. On my living room rug, the transition from orange-and-black to blue-and-white creates a soft arc that looks like a deliberate design choice.
Step Five: The Final Row and Finishing the Edge
The final row is where a lot of first-time makers get frustrated, and I’ll be transparent — my first attempt at a finished edge looked ragged enough that I eventually covered the outer six inches with a second pass. You can avoid that by planning your finish carefully.
As you approach the end of your rope, start thinking about where the final tip will land. Ideally you want it to end along a straight section of the spiral, not mid-curve, so that it can be tapered and tucked in cleanly. If you need to adjust, it’s okay to let the last couple feet of rope run slightly outward or inward to hit a better endpoint.
At the very end of the rope, use your knife to cut the tip cleanly on a slight diagonal rather than straight across. Run your lighter flame quickly across the cut end to fuse the nylon fibers — this is the same technique you use when cutting rope for any purpose, and it prevents the sheath from unraveling. Don’t linger with the flame; you just want a quick seal, not a charred blob.
Now tuck the tip of the rope back beneath the previous row so it runs parallel to the second-to-last row and points back toward the interior of the rug. Use several closely spaced stitches to fasten this tuck down firmly. When you’re done, the end should be effectively invisible from the top surface of the rug.
Go around the entire outer edge one final time with the needle and thread, adding any stitches you feel are loose or missing, and pay particular attention to the area within six inches of where your rope transition joins occurred. These tend to be the places where things can work loose over time.
Tie off your last stitch with several passes and a sturdy knot, tuck the thread tail between the rope strands, and trim it close.
Step Six: Flattening and Breaking In
Lay your finished rug on a hard floor and step back to look at it critically. Almost every first rug has some slight warping, usually a gentle dome in the center or a rippled edge. This is completely normal and almost always resolves itself with use.
If there’s significant warping, dampen the rug lightly with a spray bottle, lay it flat, place a few heavy books or a piece of plywood on top, and leave it for twenty-four hours. The nylon fibers will relax into the flat position. Most warping I’ve seen comes from uneven tension in the coiling phase, and a bit of weight usually solves it.
After a week or two of foot traffic, your rug will have settled into a comfortable flat shape that it will maintain indefinitely. The weight of the rope and the interlocking stitches mean it stays where you put it remarkably well.
Variations Worth Trying
Once you’ve made one spiral rug, you’ll start seeing possibilities everywhere. An oval rug is made by starting with a straight center section instead of a tight coil — lay about eighteen inches of rope in a line, stitch the second pass alongside it, turn at the end, and continue outward from there. The result is an oval that suits an entryway or kitchen.
A doormat version using only ten to fifteen meters of thicker rope makes a rugged outdoor mat that handles mud beautifully and can be hosed off without a second thought. The texture of the rope grips boots and scrapes debris in a way that flat-woven mats can’t match.
If you have very short lengths of rope — offcuts, anchor remnants, the pieces climbers cut off when retiring a rope for use as a fixed line — you can join multiple short pieces with the overlap method and create a patchwork spiral with far more color variation than a single rope would produce.
Caring for Your Rope Rug
Spot clean with a sponge, warm water, and a tiny amount of dish soap. For deeper cleaning, take the rug outside, lay it flat on a patio or deck, and go over it with a soft brush and soapy water. Rinse with a hose and hang over a railing or fence in the shade to dry. The same principles that apply to cleaning a climbing rope apply here — avoid harsh chemicals, avoid direct prolonged sunlight during drying, and let it dry fully before putting it back on the floor.
If a stitch works loose over time, it’s easy to repair with a curved needle and a fresh length of thread. I’ve had to do minor touch-up stitching on my oldest rug after about three years of daily use, which I consider a very reasonable maintenance interval.
A Note on the Satisfying Part
There’s something genuinely meaningful about making a rug from a rope that kept you safe. I can look at my living room floor and trace specific pitches in the spiral — the orange section is what I had on Outer Space on Liberty Bell, the blue middle ring is from a season in Leavenworth when I was learning to lead. The rug doesn’t know any of that, obviously, but I do.
Turning used gear into useful objects is one of the better habits the outdoor community has, and this project sits squarely in that tradition. It takes a weekend to do properly, costs almost nothing, and produces something that will last for decades. I’ve now made five of these rugs, given three away as gifts, and taken exactly zero ropes to the landfill since I learned this technique.
If you try it, I’d genuinely like to hear how it goes. Post a photo in the comments or send it along through the contact page. There’s a small but enthusiastic community of climbers who’ve gone down this particular rabbit hole, and the rug variations people come up with continue to surprise me.
Go make something.
