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 …

paper packing

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.

strips of brown paper

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.

use a peg to secure

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.

use pegs to hold the sections in place

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.

now go back and forth over and under the first pieces

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

join them by twisting the old and new

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:

almost done

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:

tuck the ends in

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:

woven paper rug

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…

scamp testing new mat

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:

rabbit eats mat

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!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Tags: ,

Learn to understand rabbit behaviour

8 Responses to “How to Weave a Paper Mat for Your Bunny”

  1. What a lovely plaything for a bunny!

  2. Saira says:

    Scamp : Master Tester

    I love how much stuff is given to Scamp,
    for ‘testing’ 😀

    • Tamsin says:

      Got to make sure it passes stringent quality standards and he’s very thorough at testing. Sometimes a little too thorough, I’m not really sure it was necessary to completely unweave it and taste test all the individual pieces with his teeth. Or dip them in the water bowl afterwards.

  3. annette says:

    ha ha, Scamp is so totally adorable – and a great product tester!
    made in an hour, unmade in half ? 🙂

  4. lauren says:

    i tried this but i found it really fiddly and so far its taken two hours and is only half done 🙁

    • Tamsin says:

      I found it got a bit quicker as I got the hang of it. I hope your bunny appreciated your hard work!

  5. Karima says:

    amazing! Love that it probably took you hours to make and bunny minutes to chew up. always the way.

Leave a Reply to Tamsin