Making a market basket as a model for my students

Since my two basket-making students have about two hours of work left on their sewing baskets, I will spend the rest of their second day teaching each how to make a market basket.

To prepare for this, I practiced by making one myself. First I sanded and waxed the "D" handle shown here. I will prepare the handles for the students too.



Next I cut the weavers and fillers to size, determined the rough and smooth sides, and then marked the middle point of each weaver. Following this, I soaked the weavers and then wove them into the base as shown. For the fillers I chose 1/4" cane, dyed blue.





I then bent each of the weavers against a straight edge before weaving three rows to begin the sides. Three rows of the 1/4" blue were then added followed by three more rows of weaving. At this point I cut off the inside vertical weavers .






After bending the remaining vertical weavers to the inside of the basket and tucking them in, I began to work on the rim. The clothes pins hold a round of flat cane on the inside of the basket, a second round on the outside, and a filler of cord. This rim was lashed into place with the 1/4" flat cane with the help of the "lash buddy." The lash buddy here has red cord at its near end.

The finished basket looks fine!