You can make wicker baskets yourself. For this it is necessary, first of all, to collect the necessary material. And, of course, you have to have a lot of patience and perseverance, since you can't rush in this work, especially for a beginner.
Baskets woven from willow twigs can become a real work of art. They can be used to decorate a garden plot by placing ornamental plants in them. With them it is convenient to go to the forest for mushrooms, or you can use them as containers during harvesting.
Basket weaving material
The material for the baskets is prepared in advance. Before harvesting, it is necessary to check the flexibility of the rods, since not all of them have sufficient ductility. You can check if your material is good as follows: take a bar and bend it about 90 degrees. If it does not break, then it is perfect for weaving. Pay special attention to willows with red, orange, or purple shoots. They are the most flexible and therefore the most suitable for the job.
But it's not just good flexibility that plays a role in weaving. It is important that the rods are dry during work, since raw shoots, if used in weaving, will then dry out and deform. As a result, your product will be damaged. Dried shoots should be soaked in water for several days before starting work to become flexible, and then free from the bark.
For weaving, even shoots are chosen, without any thickenings and with healthy wood and bark.
How to weave a basket
To make the simplest basket, you need a knife and a pruner.
To start work, take 8 rods approximately 45-50 cm long. In 4 of them, a split of several centimeters in length is made, the remaining 4 rods are inserted into this split so that a cross is obtained. Further, this cross is braided with two thin shoots. The thinner they are, the better. Having made 2 turns, the rods are bred one by one to the sides and now the braid is made for each rod separately.
When the length of the braiding rods comes to an end, you need to take new branches and weave them. To do this correctly, you need to have an odd number of rods in the work. Adding another one is easy, just weave it in with the rest. There should be 17 rays. In this way, the bottom of the basket is woven until it becomes the desired diameter. At the end of the weaving of the bottom, two more beams must be laid at 16 beams, and one at the 17th.
To start weaving the walls of the basket, you can set any template on the bottom, for example, a saucepan, so that the walls are even. The rods are pressed against the template and tied at the top. They begin to weave the walls from 3 rods to strengthen the bottom of the basket. Having connected several rows in this way, the walls are weaved with simple viscous. You need to add each new bar by removing its ends inside the basket. To make the product durable, the rows of rods must be pressed together as close as possible. When the walls of your basket have reached the desired height, you need to close up the sides to complete the manufacture of the product. This can be done as follows: one rack is wound up in two subsequent ones, and this continues until all the rods are sealed.
It remains to make a handle for the basket. To do this, choose a thicker rod, sharpen it at both ends and insert it into the sides of the product. Bunches of thin rods are inserted next to it and twisted around a thick rod. On the opposite side of the thin rods, they are fixed.
