Plastic Yarn Mats For The Homeless

Plastic bags are brought into the library.

Plastic yarn mats for the homeless.

Rather than throwing them out you can reuse them by crocheting them into multi purpose mats known as plarn plastic yarn. It takes 700 plastic bags to make a 6 foot tall mat with two inch straps and carry handle. The plastic serves as a great insulator and barrier to the cold ground. The plarn is then crocheted to make the mat.

Knit or crochet a test gauge with. The goal is a 3 by 6 size plastic yarn mat. Most of the yarn and bags she uses are donated from the community. Since 2017 the group with help from community volunteers has donated about 50 bed mats to people experiencing homelessness in salt lake city.

Start with about 10 plastic bags at a time. They take thousands of used plastic grocery bags and crochet them into mats for people experiencing homelessness to sleep on. Come on let s make some mats how to crochet a plastic sleeping mat step 1. As sleeping mats they re more hygienic water proof easily transportable and provide protection from the cold concrete.

However these mats were not made of yarn straw or bamboo. Knitters and crocheters will use their experience to test the gauge which will determine the number of plarn stitches necessary for a 3 by 6 mat. One loop and plarn ball at a time they work together to make mats for the homeless. 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.

Parking lot gets turned into a safe haven for the homeless at night. Cut off the plastic bag handles and the bottom of the bag. It takes about 100 hours to make one mat. In particular plarn can be used as sleeping mats for people without access to shelter.

I used size 10 5 knitting needles with a gauge of 3 5 stitches per inch but i am a very loose knitter. To make the mats plastic bags are cut into 4 inch strips and looped together to make plarn or plastic yarn. The mats are made of plarn or plastic yarn crafted out of bags that are sliced into pieces and looped into a long chain. It takes about 500 bags to make a two and a half feet by six foot mat.