Woven spiral made from recycled plastic bags

Weaving a Spiral Rug from Recycled Plastic Bags

I am hoping to prepare an outfit for the local Trashion Fashion this year. The deadline for designs is March 1, so I really needed to get going. My mom came to visit this week and asked if she could do a weaving project so – BOOM!

Putting the spiral spokes on my loom
Putting the spiral spokes on my loom

I had seen this spiral weaving project on a few blogs for the past few years, and my intention was to give it a try with cut-up t-shirts, which is the method that most people use. But one of the rules of Trashion Fashion is that you can’t use much fabric in your designs. So I wanted to see if loops of plastic could be woven instead.

We followed the instructions at Flax and Twine – they had made a spiral rug using finger-knit yarn.

I didn’t have a hula hoop, but I did have my handy Story Loom that Bob made. We started by cutting loops of white plastic bags. After putting on 8 loops, I twined two together to make an uneven number of spokes. When I tried to weave with an even number, it kept failing.

Starting the woven spiral
Starting the woven spiral

Mom kept cutting loops in plastic bags and it took a surprisingly large number of plastic bags!

So here’s my plea – EVERYONE GIVE ME YOUR COLORFUL PLASTIC BAGS! I would love red, blue, green, yellow, purple, black, orange – you get the idea. Just not white or beige.

I will need a lot of bags to make a whole outfit.

Then Nora came home and starting weaving too.

Mom makes loops to weave, Nora weaves them into the spiral
Mom makes loops to weave, Nora weaves them into the spiral
Me & mom weaving the recycled plastic bag spiral
Me & mom weaving the recycled plastic bag spiral
Mom weaving by the fireplace
Mom weaving by the fireplace

It looks so nifty. I’m looking forward to making a whole skirt of these put together.

But I need more bags! Please give me yours! 🙂