How to Make a Custom Kitchen Mat with Fabric

Hi! Want to create something awesome in an hour? Ya…. you do! Hahaha I’m ALL about upgrading your space and customizing it using simple supplies and a little bit of crafty ingenuity. We’ve just gone through a spruce up of our builder-grade kitchen and I thought it could use some fun colour and pattern.

So I made A DIY Custom Kitchen Mat!

Here are the supplies you’ll need to make one of your own!

Fabric – I bought a metre of this hydrangea print, but the size you’ll need will depend entirely on the size of your mat
Spray adhesive
Piece of vinyl flooring (I got mine in a remnant bin for $2 at the hardware store)
Scissors, pencil, ruler, tape measure, utility knife (in case you need to size your vinyl piece like I did)
Duct Tape
Hard bristle paint brush
Polycrylic in a clear coat

First thing is you have to decide the sizing of your mat and cut your vinyl if that’s necessary. Just draw a straight line, score it with your utility knife a bunch of times and then it should come apart fairly easily. The line doesn’t have to be perfect.

My mat is approximately 32 inches wide by 38 inches long. Then cut your fabric so that it’s 6 inches longer/wider than your vinyl. So my piece of fabric ended up at about 38 inches wide by 44 inches long. Once again, this doesn’t have to be exact.

Now spray your vinyl piece a couple of times with your spray adhesive and work quickly to place your fabric evenly on top. Make sure you really smooth out all of the big wrinkles and creases. You’ll have a couple minutes to do this before the glue really starts to set. After this step, I let mine sit for about 30 minutes.

Now flip over your mat and spray the corners so you can ‘wrap’ the fabric underneath – like a present. (Ignore those dark spots on the vinyl. I had just sprayed dirty areas with household cleaner and they were still drying!)

Once the corners are down, use your Duct tape to secure all the visible loose ends. I used white tape because I had it, but regular grey tape works the exact same way – plus no one will see the bottom!

It’s starting to look like a mat now, right? But it still needs to be sealed so you can sweep it off with a broom and to give it a bit more ‘washability’. Using your hard bristle brush, coat the mat lightly with Polycrylic, making sure to only brush in one direction.

Once the mat is covered with one coat, you need to let it dry for 18-24 hours. It will probably look like it’s drying really uneven and streaky – I was worried I’d ruined mine! But in the morning, it looked fine.

Do this step at least two more times. That means, it will take you a few days to get your mat in tip top shape.

It fits on both sides of our kitchen and in fact, it also fits on our top stair landing – so I’m not entirely sure where this mat will end up!

You can see the sneak peek of all the work we’ve accomplished in the kitchen over the last few weeks. We *hope* to have a reveal for you by the end of September.