Recyling Bath Towels into a Bath Mat

Happy Monday!  This weekend I worked on a much needed project in our home.  We usually use a bath towel folded in half as a bath mat when stepping out of the shower.  I wanted something a little tidier but knew I didn't want the traditional bath mat.  You know, the fuzzy carpet type with the rubber stuff on the back.  I have had those before and they do not hold up well.  The rubber stuff peels off over time and it's a mess.  I have seen several nice alternatives but decided there is no reason to purchase a bath mat when I could come up with a solution at home.  I have been trying to find solutions to our home, at home as much as possible.  When I was putting towels away the other day, the idea hit.  We had two tattered and worn bath towels in our linen closet.  One had a stain that looked like motor oil it is on the reverse side of the towel on the left. I didn't think to flip it over for the photo lol. The other was ripping and frayed.  We have plenty of other towels, so I set out to repurpose them.

I measured the width of the towel folded in half.  This is how we lay the towels down for a bathmat when getting out of the shower and is a comfortable size, so that is the size I planned to make the new mat.  Here you can see the dye stain.  It does not show through onto the other side of the towel.
I am using two towels cut down to get a two layer bath mat when finished.  First I cut off the band that is causing the towels to be gathered on the ends to get a nice straight edge.  I cut both towels to size and placed the extra which you can see folded up to the side, to make into cleaning cloths later. Hmmmm maybe even hand towels for the bathroom?

I turned the worst sides of the towels so they were wrong sides together.  Then I pinned the towels together to baste them just like basting a quilt, the tutorial with further explanation is found here.  Next I machine quilted the two towels together just as you would machine quilt a quilt.  If you have never machine quilted you can simply straight stitch lines all over in whatever direction you would like.  The only purpose of quilting the mat was to help it lay flat and to keep the two layers from shifting around causing potential falls from an uneven surface when exiting the shower.

 The last thing I did was ad a border from my fabric scraps to the outside of the rug to give it a nice finished  edge and to keep the edges from fraying and making a mess.

Here it is in the bathroom.  A bit wonky at the moment from all the sewing but will settle in after use and a wash.  It is nice and tidy and best of all....free!  All the materials were re purposed and already in our home.  I'm very pleased with how this turned out and even more so that I didn't have to spend any money for a new mat. By the way... it worked perfectly this morning :)