Craft a Patriotic Welcome Mat for Your Front Door

Craft a flag welcome mat to greet your guests all summer long. I recently found plain sea grass mats at a dollar store. The natural color meant I could add any color to spruce them up and since the grid-like weave reminded me of plastic needlepoint canvas, I decided to create a flag pattern that could be stitched with strips of fabric.

Assuming the sea grass mats you purchase may have a larger or smaller grid, I have also included additional helpful measurements along with my grid instructions. This way, you can adjust by adding or subtracting stitches or rows required to produce the flag image.

Red and white auction sheets were used for the stripes and I had blue fabric in my stash of scraps for the blue field. The mat I used had 37 bars across and 21 bars down, not including the outer border. The mat measured 13-inches by 23-inches. A plastic canvas slanted gobelin stitch was used throughout.

1. Cut strips of fabric 2 1/2-inches wide. I used approximately 14-yards of blue strips, 11-yards of white strips and 8-yards of red strips. This is strip yardage, not fabric yardage. The amounts you need may be slightly different depending on the grid of your mat and the tension of each stitch. Cut a 12-inch length of floral wire. Fold the wire in half, twisting the two ends together, creating an 'eye' on one end. This is your needle.

2. Stitch the blue field in the top left hand corner of the mat. Note: Do not stitch on the outer border of the mat. Thread a blue strip on the needle. Stitch 13-stitches across the top and 9-rows down. The blue field measures approximately 7 1/2-inches wide by 5 1/2-inches tall. Bury the ends of your fabric under stitches by stitching over them or weaving the ends under stitches using a crochet hook.

3. To the right of the blue field, skip the first row and stitch one row across the mat in white. This is your first stripe. Skip two rows and stitch a red row, two more and stitch a white row. Note: Each row is approximately 1-inch apart. Skip two more rows and starting on the left hand edge of the mat (under the blue field), stitch a red row across to the right edge. Repeat the pattern of skipping two rows and alternating the stripes to the bottom of the mat. End with a white row. You will have one row left when finished and a total of seven stripes.

4. Stitch the white star over the stitches in the blue field. Skip the first row in the field. Stitch over the seventh stitch on the second row. Stitch over the sixth, seventh and eighth stitch on the third row. Stitch over the fourth through the tenth stitches on the fourth row. Stitch over the fifth through the ninth stitches on the fifth row. Stitch over the sixth, seventh and eighth stitches on the sixth row. Stitch over the fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth stitches on the seventh row. Note: The seventh stitch is skipped. Finally, stitch over the fifth and ninth stitch on the eighth row. The ninth row is not stitched. You will need to adjust the pattern if you have a different number of stitches in your blue field.