A Pine Needle basket

I am not a weaver but i inherited a small needlework basket from my maternal grandmother and was fascinated by how it had been made. My whole reason for working with pine needles was based on this concept.. More advanced proponents of this technique will have lovely straight lines in the binding but i was happy with what i achieved. It is a slow meditative process and at some stage I want to revisit this technique.

The pine needles are threaded through a plastic straw and each layer is bound to the one before with waxed thread. Where the beaded inserts are I just wrapped the thread around the pine needles to create a window and then carried on with the weaving technique. The beads were added in later using thread to attach them inside the windows.

The edge of the lid was made in a similare way: binding the pine needles and catching them in periodically to the layer below.

I think my Nan would be very pleased to know I had carried on this tradition from her inspiration.