Plastic Grocery Bag Sleeping Mats

The bags used to make the mats.

Plastic grocery bag sleeping mats.

Wonderful community service project to reuse plastic bags and craft the bags into sleeping mats for homeless and those in need. Larger and or stiffer plastic department store bags produce bags dry cleaning bags and. Stop with the whining about using new bags already. These sleeping mats make great supplies for the homeless population allowing them to sleep comfortably wherever they need to.

Now for a plastic grocery bag that s standard in size and in thickness cut each bag into 4 rings. Cutting the bags is just the first step in the process of turning plastic bags into sleeping mats. The next thing is that they need to be loop together to string up the looms. How to make a sleeping mat or rug using plastic.

Straighten out each bag by pulling at the end and the handles so that it becomes as nice smooth and flat as the plastic bag in the picture. Once you ve pinned the bags into the proper spiral you re ready to fuse the backing on. First put the spiral pin side down on an iron safe surface. One quarter to one third of the bags that are used to make a mat have to be strung on the loom before the weaver can start weaving.

Cut off the plastic bag handles and the bottom of the bag. All bags are used bags i have cut and stored flat. Then lay your sheets of plastic bag s over the back of the spiral. The backing is simply another plastic bag split open.

You should have a large enough sheet so that there is overlap all around. It also makes a great addition to any camping trip. Rather than throwing them out you can reuse them by crocheting them into multi purpose mats known as plarn plastic yarn. 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.

Start with about 10 plastic bags at a time. How to make plarn plastic bag yarn the first time i learned about plarn yarn created by cutting and tying together strips of plastic grocery bags was in 2005 when british designer erika knight was a guest on a tv show i used to host called knitty gritty she showed it made using a rainbow variety of bags an array of which i have yet to come across here in the states and knitted into a. Nanaimo harbour city seniors in namaimo british columbia canada have taken plastic shopping bags and turned them into sleeping mats by crocheting them together. In particular plarn can be used as sleeping mats for people.