Kwanzaa Mkeka Mat: Making Your Own Mat for the Season

Are you interested in Kwanzaa? Are you interested in creating Kwanzaa crafts? If your answer is yes, this step-by-step tutorial on how to make an Mkeka mat is just for you! The Mkeka mat, which represents the history of the African people, also symbolizes "the foundation which all else is built." You don't have to go out and purchase expensive items to create this Mkeka mat, all you have to do is use simple household items.

Materials: 1 large sheet of Black Construction Paper

Large sheets of Red, Yellow and Green Construction Paper

Scissors

Glue

Small Ruler

Step 1: The first thing you must do is take your sheet of black construction paper and fold it over in half. Once the paper is folded, hold the paper horizontal and grab your ruler. Once you have your ruler, begin to making markings every inch. This will help you remember where to cut.

Step 2: Once you have your markings, take the scissors and begin to make long strip cuts in the middle of the paper. Don't go all the way to the top or the bottom when making these cuts; keep it between 1 and 2 inches away from the edge of the paper.

Step 3: The next step is to take the red, yellow and green pieces of paper and cut them into long strips. The strips should be about 1 inch in width, no thicker. Any thicker than that and your Mkeka mat will come out altered (not in the way you want).

Step 4: Proceed to unfold the black construction paper and begin weaving the red, yellow and green strips thru the mat. To do this you must place one strip at the end of the slit and weave it so you skip every other slit. Do this with all of the colorful strips until you're done. If you start you're first strip going "under", start your next strip going "over".

Step 5: While you're weaving the strips in and out of your mat, push the last strip up so your mat stays tight and neat. Once you have all of the strips weaved thru the mat, you can either choose to leave the strip ends dangling off or fold them in and glue them. This part is really up to you, a lot of people usually glue the ends so their mat doesn't fall apart.