Basketry

I was thinking about cleaning out all my old basketry stuff today and possibly getting started on making some baskets again. I haven't done any basket weaving in a while... but before I took up knitting and crocheting... basketry was my craft of choice. Here are some examples of my baskets that I found here and there at my mother's house while I was visiting this week.

This is my first Appalachian basket. I made it for class. I used grapevine, round reed, jute and sea grass to make this one. You can make this style with a handle as well by crossing two rounds of grapevine... weaving a gods eye around them and then adding your basket's ribs. Maybe I'll do a picture tutorial some day soon.

This too is an Appalachian basket... it is made with round reed, grapevine, jute, sea grass, yarn, and hand dyed jute. Now that I am more experienced at weaving I usually leave out the round and reed and simply use grapevine for my baskets ribs. It is a little more difficult since they are not as uniform... but it creates a more rustic looking basket.

This is called a Cherokee Double Walled basket. I made it using reed with accents of honeysuckle (that I gathered locally along the Blanco river) and sea grass. I would love to try and make one of these using only locally gathered honeysuckle... but I don't really know how practical that would be.


Here is the inside of the basket. Like the name implies... the basket has two walls. You start at the middle... weave up to the top... and then loop around to weave back down to create a basket that is as strong as two baskets.

Here is the inside of what is called a coil basket. You make these by wrapping a material like raffia around a length of jute or some other hardy core and you coil up until you have a basket that you like. It is very similar to crochet in the round... and you can make a variety of shapes with this type of basketry. It is also a fairly portable project unlike most basketry projects.






This project I made with materials I gathered in my own neighborhood. The core is store bought jute... but the materials I used for wrapping come from grasses and a type of cactus that I gathered and dried myself.
Cheers,
Jenn