How to Weave a Paper Mat for Your Bunny

Scamp quite likes a mat to sit on, unfortunately he quite likes to eat them too, and then he looks disgruntled because he can’t fit his backside on the bit that’s left.

We recently got a parcel packed with strips of brown paper …

and I got an idea… would it be possible to turn it into a new mat?

Only one way to find out!

Step 1: Gather Your Materials

I started by cutting it into three, giving long strips about 4″ wide, then cut those into 2′ long pieces. I then twisted the pieces a little to bulk them up.

Step 2: Pegging Columns to the first Row

I’m sure there are fancy weaving words for the across bits and the down bits, but I’m going to call them rows and columns. Lay your first piece out, that’s your first row, and then fold another pieces over it and secure with a peg, that’s your first column. Just twist the folded end with the column to keep it out of the way.

Then take another piece, fold it over next to the first and peg. And repeat! This is the edge of your mat, so add as many as you want your mat wide.

Step 3: Weaving the Paper into a Mat

Next it’s time to do the actual weaving. I used slightly longer pieces but the same width, and again twisted them a bit. Did you weave paper place mats in school? It’s exactly the same principle. You go over the first piece, under the second, over the third and so on under, over, under, over until you get to the end. Then you go back along doing the opposite – if you went over the ‘column’ piece last time you go under this and vis versa. It takes a bit to get into the swing of it.

When I ran out, I just twisted the old piece with the next piece to join it..

When you are happy with the size of the mat or you get to the end, just tuck it into one of the previous loops to secure it. Then it should look like this:

I suppose there is no reason you couldn’t leave it like that, nothing wrong with a rug with tassels!

Step 4 Dealing with Lose Ends

To finish it off, I just folded the ends back on themselves and tucked them under the loop above, like so:

You’ll need to do every other one and then flip it over and do the others, so they hold the last row in place.

At which point the pegs come off and it looks like this:

It took me about an hour, but I was making it up as I went along and taking photos to share with you so I think a bit of practice and it would be much quicker.

If you are following along, take a picture of your beautifully crafted mat at this point, you’ll understand why later.

Step 5: Testing

When I gave it to Scamp for testing, he hopped straight on and gave it a good sniffing…

Then I let him out for his exercise, before leaving him napping on his new mat whilst I ate my dinner.

Some suspicious noises later, it looked more like this:

Obviously I made it a little large and it needed adjusting.

Unfortunately he’s not great at knowing when to stop, so I imagine he’ll keep taking a little off the sides until there is nothing left to sit on. My poor lovely mat, at least I have pictures to look back on. And at least this one was free!

Tags: homemade-toys, Scamp

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 13th, 2013 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Toys & Enrichment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.