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Aug. 26th, 2012 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo I was looking at pictures of baskets on the internet the other day. (No reason. Is there ever a reason?) They were compelling.
As with so much else, it is not enough for me to look at strangely compelling baskets made by other people. That ought to be good enough, but somehow it is not. It never is.
I looked at kinds of basketry. I looked at basketry techniques. That which seemed most easily doable, in the shortest amount of time, with the smallest investment in materials, was coiling. Coiling doesn't take much.
First, you need a needle of some sort. I used a yarn needle I already had on hand because it was nicely dull and had a big eye. I imagine that a tapestry needles would also work well, if you have to go shopping for a needle.
Second, you need a bunch of flexible and thin core material of some sort. I used maiden grass (Miscanthus sinesis) leaves, which I happen to have growing in my yard. The damn stuff gets to be nearly six feet tall, so it's plenty long to work with. Shit, people do coiled baskets with ten inch pine needles. I cut the grass down and let it lie in the sun for a while to dry to about half-dry. (A little wetter than "hay" if that helps.) Fully dry materials need to be slightly moistened to keep them flexible enough to work on, so I figured that halfway dry from the "fresh" direction would be OK, or at least close enough for my purposes.
Finally, you need a very flexible and reasonably strong wrapping material of some sort. I used cotton yarn that I had around the place. I'm nothing if not cheap. I'm also impatient and would like to get started right away with project when I am interested in one, not two weeks later when I've managed to round up offiical materials.
The idea behind coiling a basket is pretty basic -- you hold the core material in a narrow bundle and then you use the needle to "sew" the wrapping material round and round the core. The sewing goes through the previous coil (or interlocks with the lower layer of stitches) to hold the current coil in place. Additional core material is added as needed, a piece or two at a time to avoid making a bump or lump in your bundle of core material. The sewing keeps going and the basket is shaped by placing the coil beside or above or diagonally to the one below it. If the core material is kept straight (not twisted) and the wrap material is pulled tight, you can build a pretty damn rigid basket with this method. I was personally surprised at the stability I achieved in coiling.
The actual hardest part of the thing is starting it. Keeping it going once it's been started is pretty trivial. More interesting: even spacing, adding additional stitches, size of bundle as it relates to shape/size of basket (matters of scale). More research is needed, but proof of concept is good. I don't know that I have any actual need for baskets, but I have a huge amount of maiden grass in the yard. Seems like a shame to waste it, don't you think??
As with so much else, it is not enough for me to look at strangely compelling baskets made by other people. That ought to be good enough, but somehow it is not. It never is.
I looked at kinds of basketry. I looked at basketry techniques. That which seemed most easily doable, in the shortest amount of time, with the smallest investment in materials, was coiling. Coiling doesn't take much.
First, you need a needle of some sort. I used a yarn needle I already had on hand because it was nicely dull and had a big eye. I imagine that a tapestry needles would also work well, if you have to go shopping for a needle.
Second, you need a bunch of flexible and thin core material of some sort. I used maiden grass (Miscanthus sinesis) leaves, which I happen to have growing in my yard. The damn stuff gets to be nearly six feet tall, so it's plenty long to work with. Shit, people do coiled baskets with ten inch pine needles. I cut the grass down and let it lie in the sun for a while to dry to about half-dry. (A little wetter than "hay" if that helps.) Fully dry materials need to be slightly moistened to keep them flexible enough to work on, so I figured that halfway dry from the "fresh" direction would be OK, or at least close enough for my purposes.
Finally, you need a very flexible and reasonably strong wrapping material of some sort. I used cotton yarn that I had around the place. I'm nothing if not cheap. I'm also impatient and would like to get started right away with project when I am interested in one, not two weeks later when I've managed to round up offiical materials.
The idea behind coiling a basket is pretty basic -- you hold the core material in a narrow bundle and then you use the needle to "sew" the wrapping material round and round the core. The sewing goes through the previous coil (or interlocks with the lower layer of stitches) to hold the current coil in place. Additional core material is added as needed, a piece or two at a time to avoid making a bump or lump in your bundle of core material. The sewing keeps going and the basket is shaped by placing the coil beside or above or diagonally to the one below it. If the core material is kept straight (not twisted) and the wrap material is pulled tight, you can build a pretty damn rigid basket with this method. I was personally surprised at the stability I achieved in coiling.
The actual hardest part of the thing is starting it. Keeping it going once it's been started is pretty trivial. More interesting: even spacing, adding additional stitches, size of bundle as it relates to shape/size of basket (matters of scale). More research is needed, but proof of concept is good. I don't know that I have any actual need for baskets, but I have a huge amount of maiden grass in the yard. Seems like a shame to waste it, don't you think??
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Date: 2012-08-27 03:12 am (UTC)We had our local not-quite-a-county-fair here last weekend, and I made notes on which categories looked easy to win in (I've been meaning to submit lace to a county fair for a few years since I saw people encouraging it as a form of outreach on lace lists). In the non-needlework handcrafts area, there was a not-very-impressive little basket (it's a small fair). If I could bend time to my will, instead of my poor time management bending me over as usual, I could enter so much crap in that fair.
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Date: 2012-08-27 12:29 pm (UTC)*I am kidding about the Tanzanite.
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Date: 2012-08-27 01:37 pm (UTC)The quilt category, on the other hand, was well oversupplied with expert entries.
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Date: 2012-08-27 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-27 09:45 pm (UTC)