Introduction: Retro Gaming Rug

By 1up Living
About: Maker with an obsession for the 8-bit!

A pixel art retro gaming rug! This is a super simple 'ible that anyone with patience can do.

I went to Ikea to buy a rug and instead came home with some rug squares and an irresistible idea to shoehorn another bit of pixel art into my living room!

Step 1: Get Things and Plan Your Design

To do this project you will need...

  • Rug squares - I chose these ones because they were "cut pile" which is nice and soft and shaggy
  • String - I got through over 100m of this stuff....you've been warned!
  • Needles - You only need one, but I lost a couple during the project so get a spare or two
  • Stanley knife and a few sharp blades
  • Nice big ruler the width of your rug squares

I made my designing on Photoshop. I set up a canvas that was 19x12 pixels in size, and with the pen set as 1px simply clicked until I was happy. I went with the classic space invader with subtle tetris shapes in the background and spots of green and pink to lighten it up.

Knopfling suggests using "half round sewing needles"

Step 2: Cut Down the Rug Squares

I started by cutting the rug squares into 10cm wide strips.

Looking at the design I figured out where I could save myself some work by working in strips rather than individual squares (you may be able to see this as different shades in the pic).

Then it was just a case of cutting the long strips to the desired length.

Step 3: Stitch and Stitch and Stitch and Stitch

Now for arduous task of stitching it together.

No big secret here...just hours and days and weeks of sitting on the floor stitching.

TOP TIPS

  • Bend the needle so you don't need to grip so hard.
  • Sharpen the tip of the needle so it pushes through a bit easier.
  • Take your time - it's gonna take a while so don't burn out trying to do too much at once.

And that's it! I don't know a whole lot about sewing so if you've got any insight into how this could be done a bit easier/better please leave a comment.

Please check out my other projects, and if you'd like to drop me a follow over on Instagram you can see more frequent updates on what I'm messing around with.