The Pickin Basket

Welcome to Basket Weaving 101. The first t So I'm going to do just a gentle fold and a mark one and then line it up with the others that have been wet. Put in warm water for 10 to 20 minutes and mark the sides. We are weaving the one quart berry picking basket. It's a beginning base basket. It's a square two-round basket and there's a good side and a bad side to materials. If you bend them in t Sometimes there is no good or bad side. They're both good. We found that the bad side goes up so it'll be inside your basket and we're going to lay it on spot n Then we have, I'm looking, I'm using my there'spot n You notice I'm watc Now we have woven our first base. Then what we look at is what we want to go under. This is going to be n Went over. Now we're going to go under and under. Left hand stays here. It holds everyt Right hand slides it down and cover the template completely. That was five. N I would here slide it into place. N T Lift up what I want to go be Holding my base in place. Lift up n Under. Under. So you want to exactly cover t After you've made a few you won't need a template. The that your basket has the same distance on each side so that would be again the center and that your holes are the same size. If you have a piece shaped Now we're going to upset t We're going to bend t Bend increase. Each one all the way around. They won't crack if they're upside down. They might have a little crack in them but I break about two a year. So the odds of breaking these are not good especially if they're wet and no one can weave a dry basket. So we've started. I choose n It's an under. It's just a good way to start your basket. So I'm going to split n So we've split t We're going to put it here at the top. Grab one piece of weaver. That would be your quarter inch flat. Grab the best piece you can find. Not too stiff. Stiff is the hardest part on row one. So t I'm going to have the bad side up, the rougher side up so it's inside. We need to taper t See that? And start by tucking it right here. I went under, over, under. Tuck it in here and if you need to and it's probably good that when you begin you do t Now stand t I want to go be Go around the corner, over, under. Now a clothespin is in order or you don't have to but it helps. Keep your work close to the edge of your basket and go under, under, over. See I stood t It's important to stand up your corners. The others are going to flop a little bit to the t Now don't go around your corners or leave it loose I'm pulling t Now I need to get t Slide t I'm holding that's my marker, place marker. Now I treated these two separately. There are two separate pieces. If I had only had one I would be going under and over the same one every time. So I needed to go under and over and I needed an odd n We're standing up the ones we didn't get the last time. See here we've gone be Now we're going to buy t So t Baskets never look good in the first three rows. It just doesn't happen. So don't worry too much. Just get your corners good. Hold your corners so they're not too loose or too tight. Go around to the t Every basket all holds together after that t Also after the third row I Either one will do. I'm a lap weaver. I find it's easier and I also weave a lot of large baskets but you can also weave it t See I have spaces. It's going to happen but we can fix it. Push up on t Get that down. Go around the corner. I use t I want t It's going to be a square. Two round. So keep that open a little bit. What I'm doing on each row is just adjusting the row before. Pus If you push down too far your basket will pitch in. Be tight and hard to work with. So if you push in pull it back out gently. Weave a little looser around that corner. T What I'm going to do is add some color but I want to get away from the bottom and not too close to the top before I do that. So I'm going to weave say five or six rows. Most problems will happen at t Straighten those up so they're nice and parallel. If your pieces are parallel you can see what your basket is looking We don't want t We're going to go back and snip that off. You're going to add a piece. Adding a piece is the same every time. You don't need to taper as you did in the beginning. You go back one, two, three, four and You don't have to go back four. You could go back two before as a safer bet. Back here, You've cut t Now I do everyt So when I add color I want to do it on the side with a split. Before I add color w I try to weave as dry as possible if you want to just dampen it and then wipe it with a towel. That's a good t But I want to go around here and whoops I had some pieces that lifted up. Let's pull them down or put my th The corners will be lower than the center and it'll sit nicely. So we're going to foot your basket first. Really tight here, less and less on these sides so that center comes up. It's important to keep your pieces parallel, not pitc If they pitch forward you're doing too tight. If they flop around out here you're doing it too loose. So we have our four points that are lower and we pulled our feet and now we're going to weave. And again we add the piece We're only going to do two here because it's at the split and it gets a little this is drier than the other because it's If it doesn't run just use a little bit of Clorox on the w So you have a nice pattern going. I do a chain pattern on these. I've given you enough to do three times around. You could do a color, two light ones, another color and two light ones. Just do any pattern you T You're always going to have t See how t Oh not a good idea. So I'm going to pull that back out and use a clove pin to hold it where I want it just till I get back. Now you have a popsicle included in your kit or if you have a popsicle or a tool included in your kit you're going to want to use it to pull these down or you can use it. Our small screwdriver. Now it's time to go back to our natural bead. We have two four six eight nine rows. You need a few more. If you won't any So that we don't want to do. Okay we have two four six eight ten twelve. I'm going to give you another row. T We're making sure everyt T So at the bottom here we tapered and the top if we cut it off it's going to be blunt. It's not going to be a nice gradual top so we're going to start here and we have three quarters down here and we're going to have a quarter up here and a half inch down here or half a piece here and we're going to do that by tapering again. Taper. There you go and t Now you can see where we had we started here and ended up over here. They're never going to line up so don'try. Okay here's our popsicle stick and I Now our basket, whoops, whoops it's rocking. Push down on the We'll make t See that? No rock. Now these are very long to be tucking inside so I am going to cut them off a bit. Just give it a little trim so I don't have to tuck these all far. You can actually cut your pieces more to a 14 and a half and a 15. I did 16. There you go. So the trick is to bend t Now the tuck, let'snip these ones off. We don't need them so you can see what I'm tucking. Right here we have a tuck. There's a couple of ways to do t I'm going to push t Now I personally, I always bend it over so you get a nice burnt bend. I push in here with my finger down and it makes it opening on the inside and I curl it down in here and down underneath that red one. And I'm pus The other way to do t Bend t It holds your basket all together. So bending over all the ones you can, you're going to either have two that get bent over or two that are cut off because you have an odd n See we have a bent and a bent. I'm going to bend that one and I'm going to pop around to get these all done for you. Here we have t Sometimes it's hard to tuck so I cut it off. Hold your basket by the base, put your hand inside so that your blade will fit as tight as possible to the edge and all the ones you didn't bend over are cut off. If you don't hold your scissors So we go inside and do it t So there we have the base. First base you see we have the feet, four feet, sits nicely. It doesn't, you can always do that. H The rim is a flat oval reed. I want to gently bend it into a U shape with the bottom part down because it gets a better grip on the basket. Now I consider t We now have a round. So we're going to use a tool to whatever we have to poke this down inside just It doesn't want to go, giving me a hard time. I will go in here, put that in there, get down inside. There we go, wiggle, wiggle works. Bring it over gently, no creasing. In here, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, there we are and the rim cases are already cut. T Now if you have a choice of materials, a stiff rim on the inside does the best job. I want to cover only the top row and t So covering just the top row, I want to raise it up, pin tight to the edge, very close to the edge, don't get out here. Now I want to overlap two or three inches because if you buck them up you have to get a pointy part, kind of an egg shaped rim w To make it neat looking rim, I Set it right there, put your outside rim on and then you have a very neat space in between. Is that polished looking? Okay and pin again only covering the top row and I started by inside rim on the front across from the split because I consider the split the messy place, the back of the basket. Can't overlap t I'm going to trim it right there and get our laser. A laser is the best piece material you have, smooth, not too stiff because you're going to drag it through these holes so it gets a little bit of abuse. Put the bad side down, put it inside your basket just See it's a nice little tuck inside the basket. Wrap the piece around your basket three times. If it'll go three times then it's going to be plenty long enough. With 25 feet long you'd be too much stuff so let's just wrap it that three times. What we're going to do is we've poked it inside, we have the bad side down and under each of these rows and if you need to make an opening we're going to feed our laser. T Don't pull too hard, don't pull it out, but push it with t And next I don't have to, it just takes a little longer, I'll pull, pull, pull and tight. Nice and tight and if they slip on you put a pin on it. The handles were traditionally notched, we're going to put a dab of glue on ours so you don't have to use a knife, but a handle was notched but it would wiggle. So we're going to make an X. Go in the first hole just If we go back and make an X it'll hold the handle on both sides. I t Pulling it tight inside, see how it's nice inside and continue. Alrighty, if you have any little goobers or hairs you can snip them off and we've come to the other side where we, I had to wet my material, it was too dry at the end so I wet it. In there if your end gets all chewed up or hairy you can take a little bit off, you have plenty of material. Now remember that taper, I'll bet you forgot all about the taper, the part under the rim that is skinny and it gets bigger, well your rim is covering that up but it could look really funny because you have, it drops down further here and that just isn't attractive. So I use my tool to go in here and make a little opening. Just now push through the rim just that one top row and make an opening so my, t I'm going to show you what it would have looked So I'm going to pull t We're done, we have a lot left w So now what to do, let's trim t I Just tuck it, I have to use my scissors to go get it. Now pull it through and trim it and it's I t And there you have it, the back of the basket, the front of the basket, your first one cord very picking square two round basket.