Plastic bags Upcycled into Mats

I enjoy weaving.  In addition to basketry, I have spent some of my time for the past year or so weaving plastic bags into sleep mats as part of a volunteer community service project.

I join a group of retirees once a week to prepare donated plastic shopping bags for weaving.  We first fold the bags, cut them into strips, join them and roll the lengths into balls.   It takes approximately 700 standard shopping bags to make one mat. 



Once the supplies are prepared we make the mats on our own time.  I weave on  a portable, handmade wooden peg loom  that sits on my dining room table.  As the strips are woven to form the mat, it fills up more and more of the table top.  Stripes of color form different patterns.  I enjoy working with different color patterns as I weave the mats.





I typically weave and watch a movie or TV.  It usually takes me about 2 movies to complete a mat. This year I have woven 7 mats in January and February.

 The finished mats are 4 ' x 6".   They are given to police, fire departments and community service organizations to distribute to individuals  known to have a need and often sleep outdoors.

Tobacco Basket

 

 

Tobacco baskets have become popular decorative accents for many interiors.  I made a 14" square basket using 1" flat reed following the traditional tobacco basket design.  The shape of the basket was influenced by its early use in the harvesting and sales of tobacco .






Colonial Maryland history and tobacco production are linked.  The demand for tobacco and the Chesapeake waterways allowed the product to be sent across the ocean to London and beyond. Southern Maryland farms grew tobacco, harvested the green leaves, cured them by hanging the leaves in open air tobacco barns.  The leaves were tied into "hands" and laid into tobacco baskets made from split oak. The baskets kept the tobacco off the dirty floors.  Stacks of the tobacco baskets were taken to auction market warehouse for sale.  The open spaces of the basket weave allowed a hook to be attached to pull the baskets to the scales and to load the baskets onto trucks after the sale. Often the company name would be stenciled onto the edge of the basket.  Today baskets are seldom used in warehouses.  They have been replaced by burlap sheets.