Leigh's Fiber Journal: Dabbling in Basket Weaving

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Dabbling in Basket Weaving

One of the places I find inspiration and ideas is Permies.com. They have developed an interesting permaculture merit badge program called SKIP (Skills to Inherit Property). I'm not looking to inherit property, but the program contains a lot of good skills, and I have learned a lot from. It's free and has something like 22 badges that can be earned with increasing levels of skill. It's the textile badges in particular that I'm enjoying. One of the requirements for the first level badge is to weave a basket.

I have to confess that basket weaving never much interested me. But since this was something I needed to check off the list, I was willing to give it a try. The basket didn't have to be large (4-inches wide and 3-inches tall), but the materials had to be naturally sourced. I chose kudzu vines. because kudzu grows so readily here,

My goats trimmed all the kudzu leaves for me.

Then I cut a bunch of young, pliable vines.

The heaviest vines were cut and tied together at their middles to create the spokes of the basket.

The smaller vines were used for weaving the bottom and sides of the basket. It was a little awkward to get started, but by pushing the spokes around, i could shape the basket.

The weaving for my project was a simple plain weave, working the vine over one spoke and under the next. To finish the top edge, I wound the vine around each spoke, then tucked the end in and trimmed off the end of the spokes.