moroccan wedding blanket diy

I've always loved the look of Moroccan wedding blankets (beautiful textile pieces covered in intricate fringe, trims and sequins). I seem to see them in every bedroom, living room, entryway that I like. Sometimes they are a rug, sometimes a throw, sometimes purely decorative and hung on the wall. However they are being used, I love them. However, they tend to be very very expensive. Like hundreds of dollars and then up from there, but I always had it in the back of my mind as something that could probably be diy-ed given the right materials. When I was cleaning out my apartment this spring, I kept coming back to this little cream throw rug (actually already a diy I had made by sewing together several smaller mats to use originally in my closet, then in the living room) that was just sitting folded in a corner. I didn't like the size and the visible seams, and that it almost felt more like a blanket weight than a rug. But then I thought, maybe I could use it as a base for my own diy wedding blanket? I laid some sequin trim I already had on it in rows and stood back and decided that it could possibly work, so I went for it.

The first thing I was looking for was some sort of thick shaggy material for the raised stripes I liked so much in the originals. I wanted something bright white as the base was more of a cream, and I found the perfect thing in a soft shaggy bathmat (actually more of a bath runner as it was about 5 feet long) which I cut into strips lengthwise. A word of warning, cutting up a bathmat causes a storm of small fuzzy bits to be released. I had to sweep up a bunch. I laid the stripes down on the base and hand sewed them down. 

Then I went to the fabric store and made some haphazard calculations while standing in awe of the wall of fringe and other various beautiful trims, and filled up my basket. I got several yards each of a long shaggy trim and a a thick woven shorter trim. As well as all sorts of sequin things.Then it was just a matter of starting. The fringe and sequin trims were attached using fabric glue. I worked on my floor, on a big piece of plastic dropcloth, mostly to contain all the bits of mess. When I had all of the sequin and fringe trim on there I stepped back and looked over the patter and decided it needed a little something extra. So I hand sewed a bunch of extra large gold sequins in among the fringe trims for just another layer of texture. 

Really then the only thing left to decide was wear to put it, It's pretty fantastically shiny and as I've seen it used so well in different kinds of rooms before (thank you pinterest) I know that it can work equally well in different spaces. For now I'm trying it out on the back of my couch but I might move it to my bed and see how that looks as well. I may add some more sequins in the future, but for now I'm just glad I was able to rescue another out of favor home item from being cast out, just with a little help from some beautiful trims!