The Pine Needle

Today I'm sharing with you how I made t Lately I've been obsessed with pine needle basketry and I thought I would share my process with you. The first t I've been using ponderosa pine needles but you can make baskets from many different pine needles as long as they are about 5 inch or 12 cm long or longer. The longer they are the easier it is to work with them. You can gather the brown needles whenever you Only pick up the best clusters from the top layer on the ground and avoid picking any that have been buried by others. Avoid pine needles that have spottings or signs of mildew as t Arrange the clusters so that they are all facing the same directions and please make sure you only take what you need so that the pine needles can continue serving the forest as mulch. After a stormy or windy weather you might be lucky to find full fallen branches with the needles still attached. T Only work with fully dried needles as green needles with shrink leaving you with a soggy basket w Next step is to soften the pine needles and for t Boil enough water to cover the needles and then pour it on top of them and leave the needles to soak for about 30 minutes. If you are not using your needles straight away place them in the freezer for a few days to get rid of any insects and then you can store them in a box in a dark place. T Once the pine needles have been soaked and drained you should have a very elastic pine needle that does not break when bending. To keep their elasticity you will need to wrap them in a damp towel w To complete t I have been using some waxed polyester thread that I use for making macrame jewelry and nylon upholstery thread. Other people For t You will also need a pair of scissors, a pair of pliers, needles and a gauge to allow you to make the same size coil and help you to hold the needles. I personally use a piece of paper straw but you could also use a small piece of metal tubing for it. Start by cutting a piece of your chosen thread. I Decap the pine needles that you will work with by pulling the ends with your nails. You can also cut the ends away if you prefer but by doing that you will have separate needles instead of clusters w Take your gauge and place enough needles inside, always in one direction. The needles should fit snugly but you should still be able to move the gauge up and down. Move the gauge about 8 cm from the end of your pine needles and make a knot with your thread near the gauge. Start wrapping the thread towards the pine needle caps. Once you have wrapped about 6 cm, hold the wrap in place and bend it in half. Now you can thread the needle and start stitc You can use a pliers here if it's difficult for you to pull the needle through the coil. Continue doing t Now you can cut the excess pine needles, make sure t Continue working on the coil by wrapping the thread about 10 times and then taking the needle and inserting it into the coil you just worked on. Whenever your gauge starts wiggling around you will have to fit pine needles to it so that if it fits snugly again, to do the bigger the coil gets, the more often you will need to add needles to it. Continue t When you run out of thread, remove the needle from it and restring it on the new piece of thread. Then insert the needle on the opposite side of where the thread tail is and pull it through, leaving about 10 cm of tail on the new thread. Tie the two threads by making two double knots. As I am using wax thread, I The wax melted by the heat, it secures the ends of the coil but if you are using somet Now we will plain stitch the first round of the coil by just inserting the needle on the back of the work through the wrapped coil we just worked on. Secure the stitch tightly and repeat all around the first coil by leaving about 3 mm between the stitches. Once you reach the starting point of the stitches, you can either continue with a single stitch by inserting your needle to the right of the stitch below or you can try the split stitch To do t I personally find that the split stitch makes the work look a lot neater but I must admit it takes a lot more time than a single stitch. The bigger the coil gets, the wider the stitches will be so when they are about 1. 5 cm apart, you will need to add stitches to keep the basket strong. To do t Continue adding stitches until you go back to the first double stitch that you added and then continue as usual by working with a split stitch. If you're making a small basket, you probably won't even need to add stitches but you'll definitely will if you're making a bigger basket. Continue working on the coils until you reach the desired dimension for your bottom coil. Mine was 9 cm wide. Before starting the walls, I burned all the tails from the added thread. You could do to shape the walls, you just need to place the new coil on top of the last bottom coil. T Stitch your first stitch as usual and then stitch it again by going through the same hole one more time. T If you need to take a break from your basket weaving, you can wrap your basket and your needles in a damp towel then place them in a plastic bag, close the plastic bag and leave it in the fridge. You can keep the needles workable for about 7 to 10 days t You'll just need to make sure that the towel is damp every few days. Once you'ready, continue working on your walls with the V stitch. If you place your coils directly on top of each other vertically, you will get straight walls. If you place them slightly on the outside or inside, you can create widening or narrowing baskets. For to do t I stitched it and then I added a vertical coil to t I know t When you reach the required height of your basket, for me it was about 8 cm, you can remove the coach and let your needles free. From t If the coil is too the goal here is to have a top as flat as possible. And now you can secure your thread by passing it a few times under the last stitch and then cut it. The last thing I do t And here comes the tricky part. To create the flat lead, I basically repeated the steps for the bottom of the basket but the only difference is that at the beginning I also created a little handle. To do t Keep wrapping the thread around the coil and bend it to create a 90 degree angle from the handle. T Keep working on the coil by wrapping the thread, stitc And once again, when you have the desired dimensions of your wrapped coil, you can continue with one round of simple stitch and then continue with rounds of split stitches. And here comes the fun part. Try the lead onto the basket and see if it fits. You don't want the lead to fit too snugly yet on the basket, you want to leave a gap of about half a centimeter from the lead to the basket. Once you're there, remove your gauge and finish off your lead And then finish the lead by backstitc To do t If you find t You can have a pine cone handle, you can add braided handles at the end or even just glue one when the lead is finished. And here's how the finished basket looks. Here's another basket I made with a normal lead where I didn't add the step on the body of the basket but instead I made a flat lead and then added a few vertical coils to the outer edge to create a fitting lead. You can see t Eventually the new one will also become light. There are several ways to help preserving the baskets by adding a layer of shellac or wax but I'm yet to try any of those methods. I would I've learned everyt I hope you enjoyed the video and I will Bye!