This soft, scrumptiously squishy DIY pom pom rug takes very few skills to create and is a great way to use up a bunch of scrap yarn!
This DIY pom pom rug is like the best gift you could ever give your home. Seriously. Your home is there for you everyday, having walls and a roof and heat. The least you can do is gift it an epically squishy, texture-tastic rug for the floor.
And let’s just admit that a handmade pom pom rug is just as much a gift for your feet and eyes as it is for your floors.
Really, this rug brings me joy every single time I look at it.
And the kids love it too. They roll around on its fluffiness and stroke the strands of the pom poms.
I wish you could reach through the screen and pet it because it’s just ridiculously soft and bouncy. It’s like part sheepskin, part sweater and part Lady Gaga costume.
I first came across a tutorial about how to make a pom pom rug on Say Yes and I knew immediately that Quinn’s room would need this furry amoeba.
And the icing on the wooly cake is that I didn’t have to buy a single thing to make this pom pom rug. I had a rug pad from several moves ago and I used up several skeins of white, cream and oatmeal-colored yarn from my stash.
(This rug turned out to be that 1 in 100 time where you can justify all the stuff you’ve been hoarding for years “in case you need it for a project some day.” I needed it! And thus will now have ammunition to justify hoarding another 10 years of craft supplies.)
DIY Pom Pom Rug Supplies
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• yarn (Try to use different textures and thicknesses to add more variety to your rug, especially if your color scheme is fairly monochromatic like mine. Check out this guide if you need help choosing rug colors.)
• rug pad
• toilet paper tubes
• sharp scissors (These are my fav!)
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How to make a pom pom rug
1. Cut your rug pad into the size and shape you’d like your rug to be. Mine is an oval.
2. Make a boatload of pom poms. (Check out my full pom pom tutorial!) Make sure that you leave the “tails” of the yarn you’re tying around the pom pom yarn pretty long. These tails are what you’ll use to tie the pom poms to the rug pad.
3. Lay your pom poms out on the floor and admire how cool they’ll look together.
4. Make even more pom poms. Lay them out and admire some more.
5. When you’re starting to get close to having enough to cover your rug pad, begin tying them on using the “tails” from creating the pom poms. I knew I wanted a really dense rug, so I placed them fairly close together. Once you’ve tied some on, you can always go back and fill in any gaps if it’s not fluffing to your liking.
6. Make some more pom poms. I’m just kidding. Kind of. You will probably find though that once the pom poms are all tied to your rug mat, there’s going to be areas you want to fill in a little bit.
7. Trim off any wildly stray strands from your pom poms. And if you’d like, trim the tails on the backside of the rug. I didn’t.
8. Sink your feet, hands, heck even your elbow, into the heavenly bliss that is a pom pom rug.
9. What room in your house could use a little pom pom floor party? I hope you enjoy your rug as much as I love ours.
If you’re looking for other modern DIY home decor ideas to deck out your space, you might like:
How To Make a Hexagon Shelf From Popsicle Sticks
15 Minute Floating Box Shelves from Cigar Boxes How to Recover a Glider Chair
DIY Modern Bunny Shelf (perfect for a baby’s nursery!)
tarah says
I am going to make this! i love this idea.
p.s what is the cardboard tubes used for?
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Yay! We love our rug around here. The tubes are just for wrapping the yarn around to make the pom poms.
Ayushi says
Hi Jess, I’m thinking of making this for my kid niece and nephew. I unfortunately have no idea how much yarn to order. Approximately how many spools did you use and what were the lengths of the spools? Also, what size was your rug? Any help on this would be great!
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Hey Ayushi!
Man, I wish I had a simple answer to this. My rug is about 20″ in diameter. The thing is, the amount of yarn you need is very dependent on how thick it is, how fluffy you make your pom poms and then how closely together you tie them onto the rug pad. The great thing is that you can use inexpensive yarn for this because you don’t need anything fancy, so if I were you, I might order a little extra. If I had to guess, I’d say you could get by with 1-2 skeins of thinner (worsted weight yarn) and 3 skeins of chunky yarn to make one rug and you’d probably have some yarn left over. Again, this is just a really rough guess because I used a bunch of yarn from my stash.
Hope that’s slightly helpful! 🙂
Jess
Ayushi says
Hi Jess, I’m thinking of making this for my kid niece and nephew. I unfortunately have no idea how much yarn to order. Approximately how many spools did you use and what were the lengths of the spools? Also, what size was your rug? Any help on this would be great!
pom pom says
WOW! This is so cute!
Thanks a lot for your tutorial.
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
My pleasure 🙂
Hannah says
Is this rug washable?
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Hey Hannah,
Unfortunately, I don’t think it would fair well in the washer. I think the pom poms might look a little ragged and droopy after the spin cycle.
Hope that helps.
Jess
Erran says
Are the pom-poms baby safe??thanks 🙂
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Great question. I have found that as my daughter gets older, she’s able to pull some of the strands out of the pom poms, so I’ve needed to put it away for a while until she learns not to do that. Repeat Crafter Me has a great video tutorial on making pom poms with hot glue in the middle, which I think would solve the problem.
Hope that helps!
Jess
carolyn says
hi Jess. can you tell me about your scissors please? the link you posted isnt working and ive spent hrs searching online. google is not my friend right now.
Carolyn says
I’m sorry Jess,I should’ve been more specific. The scissors I meant were the ergonomic black ones.
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Oh! I got them at IKEA for less than $5! I brought them probably about 7 months ago.
Hope that helps (and that they still have them so you can get some)!
Carolyn says
Awesome! Thank you!
kim hingston says
How many dfferent size pom poms sizes did you use?
Thanks!
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Good question, Kim. I kind of made them randomly, but I used the same piece of cardboard for most of them. I think they look slightly different because of the different weights of yarn. This is a super forgiving project so just experiment a little bit 🙂
I think you’ll love the final product. I do!
Jess
Alexis says
Ah!! This is so cute and fluffy! I just want to stick my toes in it – is that weird?
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Ha. No, I don’t think that’s weird at all, because it feels AWESOME when you do! And you’re reminding me of my favorite pickup lines–“I’d like to run barefoot through your hair.” My friends and I used to dare each other to say it to guys in college 🙂 Now I just want to run barefoot through big fluffy piles of yarn…
Aga / Passion Shake says
Wow Jess! Your rug is too pretty! Well done 🙂
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Thanks Aga! I love it. It’s almost the kind of thing I don’t want anyone to step on, but I try to remind myself that I can alway just make another one 🙂
Happy crafting!
Jess
Aga I Passion Shake says
Haha so true!! I would probably hang it on the wall to be sure ! :”)
Emma says
Such a cute idea 🙂
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Thanks Emma! I really had fun making it.
Happy crafting!
Jess
Nicoletta @sugarlovespices says
This is such a cute rug! Love your idea, it looks so soft and plush. Complimets for your skills, and pictures!
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
I wish you could reach through the screen and squish it, Nicoletta. It IS plush! I’d make a pom pom pillow topper for my bed if I had the patience 😉
Amanda Birkett says
Hi, I’m loving this however I have a problem I hope you can help me with, no matter what yarn I use or how many times I wrap it around it’s never fluffy, just saggy & a flop, any idea what I’m doing wrong.
Thank you. X
Jess @ Make and Do Crew says
Hey Amanda,
I think you probably just need more overall strands of yarn per pom pom. So whether you’re using a pom pom maker or a cardboard tube, I’d just wrap more yarn around before cutting it to make the pom pom. 🙂
Jess
joy says
hey nicoltta@sugarlovespices there is a video on youtube for this, it is called the secret to a perfect pom pom, hope i could help