Articles of Art
The Designer non-slip non-crappy mousemat!!!!!
Ever had a mousemat that drove you crazy, cover peels off there is a bend in the middle, it slides around on glass desk tops?
After buying umpteen ones that annoyed the hell out of me and after spray glueing the cover back on my wetsuit matt for the third time, I decided I have to do better than this!
Last week I was shopping at “Flash Harry’s” our local cheapo junk shop, you know the ones full of cheap stuff than can either be totally useless or totally useful depending on your personal need at the time! Theses places are a creative person’s paradise!!
Any how I came across this stuff
Non slip plastic woven grippy stuff, designed to go under things to stop them moving around. This particular one was fine and thin, perfect!
So I measured up my mousemat made up a pattern so I can repeat the process, I suck at measuring stuff straight so I used my new skill of making simple pattern shapes in Illustrator I have saved the pattern to pdf and if you are like me too lazy to measure up even a simple square click HERE to download it.
Make Sure no "scaling" is selected to print the pdf!
So I used some of Rainbows End fabrics to make the cover and Rainbows End bias tape which I made with my brand new Simplicity bias machine. If you don’t have one of these little wonders you can make your own bias by simply cutting a 5cm stip on the bias from a length of fabric and ironing the edges over or you can buy a simple bias folder like this
and manually iron in the folds either way I recommend you use a wider bias commercially available is too thin! I also used a thick interfacing for the inside of the matt and I used a fusible webbing to adhere the cover fabric to the interfacing to ensure there would be no wrinkles in the mat surface.
Making The Mat
1. Join your paper pattern together by overlapping and glueing down the green sections marked on the pattern
2. Use your pattern to cut
a. fabric cover
b. iron on fusible webbing
c. thick interfacing
d. non slip grippy stuff.
3. Iron the fusible webbing to the wrong side of your cover fabric, remove paper backing from webbing (hint: Use a pin in one corner to lift the paper and make sure webbing is still warm, it lifts away easier)
Line up the cover complete with ironed on webbing to the thick interfacing and iron to adhere all three layers together
You will then have a nice thick pad like this
4. Line the non slip stuff up with the interfacing, if there is any over hang from any of the layers trim to line up with the cover layer.
Now if you are an expert at sewing the bias tape on in one go I suggest you pin on the tape and go for it! However you must sew it on from underneath (grippy side up!!) as the grip mat will grab the sewing bed of your machine and will not let the needle move!
However I am really hopeless at doing that so I sew it the way my grandmother taught me. Its slower and involves slip stitching the binding down but makes a nice neat finish!
5. Take your bias tape and trim the inside of one end diagonally
6. Fold the edge over and pin to the centre of one side of the underneath (grippy stuff) pin it to the side you wish to be the bottom of the mat)
7. Stitch bias in place.
8. Trim away grip mat and interfacing from the seam
9. fold over to right side and slip stitch in place
NB:If you choose to fully machine stitch and skip the hand stitching you must at all times have the grip matt facing upwards when machine stitching so it will not stick to the machine bed.
Enjoy your new completely functionally completely machine washable mousemat! And happy computering
.gif)
