How To Make A Sleeping Mat Out Of Plastic Bags

The basic instructions are above and can be modified to the desired size of bag.

How to make a sleeping mat out of plastic bags.

Rather than throwing them out you can reuse them by crocheting them into multi purpose mats known as plarn plastic yarn. Start by folding your plastic bag in half vertically. Gauge 12 sts x 24 rows 4 10 cm in garter stitch. So far they have spent at least 100 hours on the project producing 18 mats that have been handed out to the homeless and there are many more to come.

Materials to make a sleep mat from plastic bags. Repeat step 3 until mat measures 72 183 cm from edge. Then lay your sheets of plastic bag s over the back of the spiral. In this video i demonstrate how to make a sleeping mat with recyclable grocery bags.

First put the spiral pin side down on an iron safe surface. The plastic bags will melt to the iron. Here s one tutorial for making a plarn sleeping mat and here s another tutorial and if you re on ravelry here s another although you ll have to log in or create a free account to view it. Now take your strips and roll them together into a ball of plarn or plastic yarn.

Meanwhile in norwalk iowa the mighty mat makers meet once a week at st. Opting to use green canvas bags for your grocery shopping is an effective option but many people still have excess plastic bags lying about the place. Plastic bags 500 700 grocery bags. From here you cut these into strips.

Make plarn using the above episode of ask me monday as a guide. The news reports always make it sound desperately exotic sleeping mats. Basic knit sleep mat recipe. All you need is a pair of scissors crochet hook and chained grocery bag.

Approx 140 plastic bags or 1260 yds of plarn size us 11 8mm scissors. Note i put the sheets ink side down so that the ink didn t have a chance to transfer to any other surface. The thicker the strips the thicker your mat. Cast on 72 stitches.

You are now ready to begin knitting or crocheting your plarn mat. Plastic yarn can be used to crochet shopping bags very easily. Out of plastic bags but the truth is that it s totally do able.