Plastic Bag Doormat (part 2)

Finishing my braided jean rug encouraged me to get back to another project that I began over a year ago - crocheting a doormat out of plastic bags.  That project had stalled because I ran out of plastic bags.  Since then we accumulated more bags, and I continued to work on it sporadically over the past year, but I decided it was time to put in the effort and actually finish it!

Check out the original post I wrote about this project over a year ago: 
Plastic Bag Doormat (part 1).

And here is the finished project!

I completely lost track of how many plastic bags it took to make the finished mat, but it was a lot!  As you can see, it didn't end up laying very flat or having even edges.  I found that the pattern I was using didn't work very well, and I kept on adjusting it as I went, trying to fix the different problems I found with it (specifically that the corners were much too pointy and the mat wouldn't lie flat).  I managed to solve the pointy-corner problem, but couldn't quite get it to lie flat.  However, I read that one way to fix that is to use a hair dryer!

The heat melts the plastic just enough to let you mold the shape a little and encourage it to lie flat.  It worked very well!

The completed mat by the front door!  It feels so good to finish projects.