How to Make mats for the Homeless
Looking for a way to pay it forward in your own community. Here it is! All it takes is some plastic grocery bags, a rotary cutter and a mat, a ruler, and a crochet hook. Pretty easy!
Collect CLEAN plastic bags from the grocery store, Target, Wal-Mart, etc.
- The store t-shirt bags are what the mats are made of.
- The bags need to be in good shape — not full of holes.
Fold the bags to their original shape.
Cut the bags into 2.5 inch strips.
Make plastic yarn (PLARN).
- Link the strips to form PLARN and roll into balls. (Typically put together 600 strips to form 1 ball.)
- Then it takes between 5 and 6 balls to complete a mat.
- That is a total of 3000-3600 strips or 600-700 bags per mat.
Crochet the mat into a 3 foot by 6 foot mat.
- It is a single crochet with a size P or Q Hook.
(I perfer the size Q hook.) - Make a chain 36 inches long which is about 66 chains. Make the loops loose with a little space between each loop.
- Make an extra loop at the end to use as your turning point.
- Start at the 3rd loop to make your second row.
- Continue until the mat is 6 feet long.
- Crochet from front to back so that it does not pucker up.
- Crochet 2 rows of a single crochet to form a tie that is 80 inches long.
- Connect the tie to the mat so the mat can be rolled up and carried like a sleeping bag.
Click here for the blog that first had these instructions ⇒
