Coiled Basket Making & Weaving

The coiled basket is just one of the many kinds that you can make from grasses, corn-husks, rushes, or any of the long, pliable shoots and leaves that may be gathered throughout this country from April until October. Among the earliest is sweet vernal grass, then comes June grass, and when the summer is well on its way sedges and other water-grasses flourish luxuriantly along the brook and in low, marshy places. Down South there are the long pine needles that grow in threes from a tiny sheath as if all ready for a coil. Although these materials are all soft, the finished basket will be stiff and sturdy if the coil is held firm and sewed tight.

The coiled basket belongs to the great family of sewed baskets, but, unlike so many others in that family, it is not slow or tedious work to make neither does it require a design or pattern, but depends for its interest upon the variation in the natural color of the grasses themselves, and for its beauty in form upon the symmetry of the coiling. Sometimes, to vary the texture, broad strips of corn-husks are worked in with the slender grasses.

The wrapped start of a coiled basket.

Needle in position for the first stitch in the coil.

But to get started with making coiled baskets. Take a bundle of the dried grasses (the way to dry them was told in the chapter on basket-planning) and dampen them slightly. A good way is to sprinkle them with hot water and allow them to remain rolled in a cloth until evenly moist. Then draw enough from the bundle to make a small roll, one about a quarter of an inch thick, thread a heavy needle with a strand of raffia that has been dyed to match the grass, and you are ready to sew. Both hemp and manila fiber are also used for sewing, but they are both fine and cannot be used single, so that they are rather troublesome to handle. They can be got from shops that keep rope and .cordage, or from a carpet mender and weaver.

Tie the raffia to the coil very near the thick ends of the grasses (the root ends) and wrap the raffia around the coil nine times, leaving a space between each wrapping as the diagram shows. The center of the basket must be formed with this wrapped portion by coiling it around tight, so that the short end is in the middle and the long grasses pass toward the right. To make the first stitch bring the threaded raffia over and around the grasses and stick the needle diagonally from right to left through the first wrapping-stitch. The second diagram shows the needle taking the first stitch. This brings the needle out on top again, ready to wind around the coil and fasten into the second wrapping. Continue coiling and sewing, and it will be noticed that the stitches form curved lines that radiate from the center. When the circumference gets so large that the radii of stitches are too far apart to keep the coils firm, extra wrappings around the grasses must be made between stitches. The next time around these wrappings will be places to anchor stitches. The extra wrappings must be symmetrically added, that is, one or two between every two stitches.

Making the curve or flare for the side of the basket is simply a matter of building the coils over one another at just the right angle for each successive circumference. A drawing of the form helps to keep it more clearly in mind. As soon as the coiling of the side begins it is no longer possible to work from left to right. The needle must be brought through a stitch to the under side of the work (what will be the outside of the basket), and then the sewing and coiling continue as before, except that the latter is now from right to left.

Lawn or porch mats, that are far more serviceable than cushions, or gardening mats to kneel on, are especially satisfactory made in this way, and would be easy pieces to begin on. They require no shaping and work up quickly, using a half-inch-thick coil.

Grasses are not all the same length, so the coil will begin to get thin before its end is reached. As this happens,- insert the stem ends of new grasses, a few at a time, into the coil and continue sewing until the last round is sewed in place. Three inches before the end of this last round cut out a third of the grass from the coil, cutting from the center, so that the ends will not show. Continue sewing for another inch, and then reduce the coil by half and finish sewing to the end. Be sure to fasten the end with several stitches sewed over and over.

Just one last word about large coiled baskets made with thick coils. With these each new stitch must catch into the coil as well as under the stitch. If the coil is quite thick, a half-inch or more, and is made of fine grasses, it will be necessary to brace it. A reed, concealed by the grasses, like a core in the coil, will answer this purpose, or broom grass that grows along the roadside late into the fall is also a good coil-stiffener.

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