The Wave by Curry Wolfe

I love seeing what people make with the little ceramic basket bases they buy in my MakeABasket Etsy shop!

Curry Wolfe got this little base awhile ago, and made a basket as a Christmas present. As many of us do, she let the basket go without photographing it. But her friend was kind enough to snap a few views and send them back to her, so we get to see it!

Curry took the flamingo base and made a whole little scene out of it, with wrapped rows and strategically placed sparkling beads, she made a whole little ecosystem with shoreline and a big wave coming in...watch out, flamingo! I love it!

You can think of your own novel and colorful ways to make coiling your own thing...

look for supplies at MakeABasket.etsy.com

pamela

Bug A Bug A Bug

When my youngest son was small, he loved bugs...and i used to say to him "bug a bug a bug" all the time...i don't know why. But this grew into a nickname, and bugs have never been the same around our house.

It is nice to know others like them too.

Here is testimonial to that. Another gorgeous basket by Geraldine Kiser.

She says, "This one went to another daughter, Ellen. Ellen has loved bugs of ALL kinds since before she could talk. I have NO idea why, it's just Ellen. When she was little I told her the house was sprayed for bugs so if she brought them in they would die. She happily transported bugs OUT of the house all the time! At age 27 she still LOVES bugs!"

The basket is so pretty, Geraldine, and how wonderful that you chose something she loves so much to combine with your talent for coiling.

Of course the base was purchased in my MakeABasket etsy shop. You might find a few bugs there still, if you are interested (or frogs, or lizards, etc.) To find a particular motif, to to the search box at the top of the page in my etsy shop and type in a search word. Make sure "this shop" is selected from the drop down menu before you search! I accept requests, as well!

Geraldine has started a new blog, you may find baskets there too! Check it out: http://gdinespicoftheday.blogspot.com/

More Great Bakets from the Family Fusion Blog

If you read my blog, you probably have been to the Phillips Family Fusion blog, too. As I write this, i notice there are no fewer than 82 posts tagged "basket." So much more, too!

But I admit, it is the baskets that keep bringing me back!

Some of them are made with pottery bases from my MakeABasket.etsy.com shop...like these butterflies, and red autumn leaves.


So fun! I love the beads treatment on the butterfly one.

Great job, Vicki!

Return from BlogBreak: Great Baskets to Get You Back Into It!

Well, I have taken a little break from this blog, it has been almost 2 whole months since I posted! Sorry to keep you hanging.

Fortunately, others have been hard at work, to fill the gap. If you are looking for an active, interesting blog with some basket content to follow, I highly recommend Vicki Phillips blog, Phillips Family Fusion. Fed daily by Vicki and her daughter, it is a wonderful amalgam of their lives, including not only Vicki's wonderful pine needle creations, but nature, gardening, animals, touring, home...there is something for everyone!



Here are images of just a few of the wonderful basketry creations Vicki has blogged about.

Some of Vicki's baskets feature pottery bases from my MakeABasket shop on etsy. I am flattered.

She really does a great job, complementing the glazes, and bringing the colors together in her weaving. But what i really love are all the stories she tells about her baskets. These are the kinds of things i think about when weaving my own baskets. In addition, Vicki has a great hand with the photography aspect of blogging, taking a great styled shot of each basket in a different setting. I love it!

Clicking on the photos of each single basket in my blog will take you to Vicki's blogpost about it.






the depth of field on this next image is wonderful, Vicki!


This last one is my favorite, i love the colors and the way it just all works! Very lovely.



Vicki sent me the shots of all her baskets together, in preparation for a show she has coming up. Also, some of the baskets are for sale at the Gig Harbor History
Museum during their Woven Stories: Native American Basketry of the
Pacific Northwest and Alaska exhibit July 9 - October 16.

Best of luck to Vicki on her basket sales!
I would love to see what the rest of you are weaving!
pamela

Baskets by Vicki Phillips

Take a look at this great basket made by Vicki Phillips, with a dragonfly base from my MakeABasket etsy shop! More photos can be seen in her blog. The Phillips mother/daughter team share all sorts of wonderful things in their blog. To find more basket entries, look at the labels on the right column of their blog, and click on "baskets."

Darling Daisy Basket by Jeanie Weber

I do love seeing what people make with my ceramic basket bases! This one is by Jeanie Weber, of www.BasketCaseCreations.com who asked me to make some daisy bases for herself and her sister, wanting to make some hostess gifts. They had seen the beautiful basket made for me in the Asymmetrical Exchange by Diane Heister, and wanted to have similar bases for their baskets.


Jeanie tells me she used chrysanthemum stone beads, saying, "I ended up using more beads than usual—was afraid too many, in fact--but everybody who’s seen this one seems to like it a lot, so there you go! "
She also glued a piece of leather to the bottom of the ceramic base to give it a little more protection. That's a great tip, Jeanie! I have also used cushy fabric, like polyester blanket material or felt. A spray-on adhesive works really well.

You can click on any of the photos in this blog to see them larger, and i recommend doing so for Jeanie's darling daisy basket, which she has named "Bloom Where You Grow." Love it!

Daiy basket bases like this one can be found in my MakeABasket shop.

Stay tuned for exchange baskets, in our Summertime Exchange. They are starting to be shipped!

pamela

More Great Baskets

It has been awhile since I have had basket photos to post, and Waldena Hendrix has saved the day! These lovely baskets were made by Waldena, using bases from my etsy shop, MakeABasket.

Here is what Waldena had to say about these baskets:







The asymmetrical one is my first try at a non-traditional shape. I was inspired by other baskets shown on your blog and the pineneedlegroup. I just decided to bend the coil in an odd direction and see where it led me.



I created the pink one because your basket starter was such a great match to the fusha and plum needles I purchased from artgalstudio on Etsy. It's kind of Easter-y.

I like to network with other coilers.

I really appreciate your blog and the pineneedlegroup. It keeps me inspired to improve my work.

Thanks
Waldena

Well, thank YOU, Waldena! I love that you are branching out and trying new things.

I absolutely cannot believe the vibrant color in those fuschia pine needles! Everyone will be running over there to get some.

I also really enjoy the asymmetrical shape on the brown one, would love to see another view of that, with the pattern on the base visible. It is such a cute little shape, too.

If you have a basket made with one of my pottery bases that you would like to share, please send me a picture!

pamela

Beautiful Baskets by Lynda Esto

More beautiful coiled baskets!

These are by Lynda Esto, who lives in Florida. Lovely baskets, Lynda.

Lynda used pottery starts from my MakeABasket.etsy.com shop to begin these baskets...but she obviously went on to give them her personal flair. Great job!

I love seeing baskets made with my pottery bases. If you have baskets to share made with pottery bases you got from me, and would like to share your photos, please email them to me!

pamela

More Beautiful Baskets by Ruth Anne Danger

Wow, congrats on your blue ribbon from the Florida State Fair, Ruth Anne! This is a stunning basket! I really love the serpentine coil on the outside of the basket, and of course the perfect stitching! So inspiring, don't you think?


We have shared the wonderful baskets of Ruth Anne Danger before...and she just keeps making them. Those of you who have "friended" Ruth Anne on Facebook may have seen these before...but we just had to share them again! This one features not only serpentine coils couched on the out side of the basket, but a twisted handle in the "hurricane" tradition as well! Let's peek inside and see another surprise!

These all feature pottery basket bases from my MakeABasket.etsy.com shop. This one has flamingos on it. The next one is of my "Forest Floor" series, that has all different types of vegetation pressed into the clay. I have ferns and leaves and grasses in many shades of green and brown.

Doesn't Ruth Anne do a fabulous job? I just love seeing people's baskets! If you have made a basket with my pottery bases and would like to share it, please send a photo to me in an email.

pamela

More Beautiful Baskets by Shatoma

These baskets were made by Shirley Thomason (Shatoma,) using pottery bases from my etsy shop, MakeABasket.etsy.com


Shirley is a prolific coiler, and i love seeing her work!


If you would like me to publish photos of baskets you have made with pottery bases you purchased from me, please email them to me! To see more baskets made with pottery bases from my shop, click on the label "pottery base" at the bottom of this post!

thanks
pamela

Getting Ready for Convention!

Well, it is that time again - NCBA Convention is just around the corner! I am dashing around, trying to get everything ready. My mother comes to stay with the kids, and I am trying to get the house in order, in addition to gathering all my goods. Are you ready for convention? It's going to be amazing, as always! If you have never been, why not take a virtual visit through the NCBA Photos page?

One thing I am doing this year that i have not had to do in the past is to care for my etsy shop.

My MakeABasket etsy shop contained almost 4oo pottery bases for coiled baskets until this afternoon...when i started removing some to take to Teacher's Marketplace with me. (That's me at Teacher's Marketplace last year, at left, and a previous year, below.) It is crazyville! I cannot bring them all! I wish i could, but the table they assign us (only one per teacher) is about 2 feet by 6 feet, and the pottery pieces have to lay flat to allow them to be seen. So i can only bring SOME. I have removed what i am bringing from my shop, so if you visit MakeABasket.etsy.com and see something you want to see in person at convention, please email me to tell me what it is so i can bring it. Everything i am bringing has already been taken out of the shop. If it does not sell, it will return after convention (March 11-14.)

I also have some brand new bases and designs that will debut at convention, so even if you have seen everything in my shop, don't forget to stop by and look around!

Thanks again for your support, i really appreciate it!

pamela

Shaping Coiled Baskets: 7

Thanks so much to all who have commented. I am so excited that Vincent and Tony both are itching to make square baskets now. I am sure their endeavors will be wonderful. I hope they will share them with us! (please?) Anyone else planning a cornered basket?

Moving on in the topic of shaping coiled baskets....

Have you seen coiled effigies? They are very cool! We have had a few effigies in our Pine Needle Exchange. Check out Terrance McArthur’s huge pine needle fish (from PN Exchange # 2)

Or Nella Johnson’s turtle effigy in exchange #10

There are lots of other extreme shaped baskets in the Pine Needle
Exchanges. Check them out!

Most effigies, in addition to requiring extreme shaping, also have added elements, legs, heads, etc. These are sometimes added onto an already coiled shape (couched on,) or made by splitting the coil at the point of addition. Splitting the coil, and letting two part diverge, coil into two separate parts of the basket, is easier, in my opinion, than adding a whole separate coil.

Coiling elaborate shapes brings many challenges, not the least of which is support. In order for pine needles to arc around tiny curves, they generally have to be very flexible, which usually means they have to be soaked (or glycerinized?) This sometimes means getting them to bear weight is a real issue.

Just ask Lynn Hoyt about her trials getting this giraffe from The Effigy Exchange to hold his head up and stand on his thin little legs (not to mention the round and round and round coiling in that tiny space for such a long distance!) What a fabulous job she did on her giraffe! You can see she used stitcks to reinforce the extremities (the cute little hooves give it away,) but as i recall, the difficulty was really making the legs attach to the base without wobbling all over the place.

In effigy coiling, It is usually easier to build a complete internal support system or armature around which to coil.

One of my very early pine needle sculptures was a huge mushroom. I wanted to give a little elf a place to sit. The cap of the mushroom simply would not stay on the stem. This was a very early piece, i must say, only a few months after i first started coiling. I was very happy with the shaping, including an indention where my little doll would sit. But the thing was floppy! I tried waxing and all sorts of creative stitching. I finally just put skewers down through it from the top. I think i could do a much better job if i took on the project now, but the FIRST thing i would begin with would be an armature.

Here is an example of the difference (in twined figural sculpture)
sculpture without armature
sculpture with armature

Just to remind you, here is TV McArthur's amazing "fur" pine needle coat again, because i am just enamored with and amazed by it!

Next blogpost we will talk about free shaping, and asymmetrical baskets, what i think is the most fun of all! Please leave your comment for everyone to read.

Thanks

pamela

Lovely Baskets from Janet Bonnell

I received this email today:

As promised I'm sending along the photos of the baskets that I have made using the pottery bottoms that I bought from you. First of all, I would like to say that you are a pleasure to deal with and your items are of top quality and that is something to treasure these days. I just loved the pottery bases and I'm sure that I will be ordering more in the future.

The first basket using the blue base I titled "Patina". It's coiled with waxed linen and pine needles. It's 14 inches wide.

The second with the daisy base is titled "Rythem of Nature". It also is pine needles and waxed linen. It is 14 inches wide and is embellished with faggoting.

I truly hope that I have done your lovely bases justice with my work. I always try to let the base talk to me and tell me how the rest of the piece should go. I believe that the basket should be a reflection of the base.

Thanks again.
Janet Bonnell
www.pineywoodsbasketart.com

Wow, what beautiful baskets Janet has made! I really love the bands of wrapped gradient color in "Patina," in imitation of the different colored spirals in the center Janet! In the daisy basket, it amazes me that you have made little petals out of the loops of pine needles, which again mimic the petals of the daisies. They really do reflect the base! I also love the undulation of the twisting coils in this one. They are so wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.

I have just recently uploaded new bases to my MakeABasket.etsy.com shop, and hope to have more beginning next week. Send me your photos, of baskets made with these bases, i will post them!
pamela

to see more photos of baskets made with pottery bases, click the label "pottery base" at the bottom of this post!

Basket by Pamela Caskey

Here is another lovely basket made with a pottery base from my MakeABasket etsy shop. Coiled by Pamela Caskey, for her daughter, as a Christmas gift, I think. The pottery base features two hands, a large one and a small one, and an apple passing between them.




It looks like Pam used many different colors of binder, incorporated nutslices and faggoting! This basket was alot of coiling! She embellished it on the outside with a matching apple bead. I love the bands of wrapped color in the basket, Pam! Nice job. Thank you so much for sharing these images with us!


If you are a member of the Pine Needle Group, you may have already seen Pam's basket, as she posted it in the photos section there. That is a great place to meet other weavers and share information about coiling!

To purchase pottery bases, bead embellishments, sinew, and coiling tools, please visit my MakeABasket etsy shop. I am listing new pottery bases right now, including new designs. I am also open to suggestions for new motifs you would like to see in pottery bases.

to find more baskets made with these pottery bases, click on the label pottery base below

pamela

Corn Basket by Shirley Thomason

Here is another lovely basket, made by Shirley Thomason, or Shatoma, as many people on the Pine Needle Group know her. I love the stripe of yellow pine needles in it, Shatoma! So nice of you to share it with us!

More corn bases are coming to my etsy shop, MakeABasket, soon!

to find more baskets made with these pottery bases, click on the label pottery base below
Pamela

Beautiful Basket by Susan Avery

Remember awhile ago, there was a giveaway in this blog, and Susan Avery won the pottery base and coodinatating bead? Well, I just got this lovely email from Susan:

Pamela,
I just completed a basket made with the pottery base and button that I won from your blog contest sometime ago. As you requested, I'm enclosing pictures of what I made. By mistake, I made the knob a little out of proportion to the base, but oh well, that is how it sometimes works out. I've yet to conquer balance of design and probably never will, but that does not stop me from continuing the full enjoyment of coiling. I think that is what it is all about.


One other note, I finally learned how to use the needle grabber and not sure how I ever got along without it. Thanks for your efforts with that as well.

Regards,
Susan Avery

I don't think the knob is out of proportion at all! What do you all think? I think the basket is graceful and very beautifully proportioned...as a matter of fact, Susan Avery's work reminds me of the work of Susan Cowell,which i have long admired. I was intrigued by Susan's treatment on the first row of the base. So I asked her about it, and she wrote again:

first tried attaching the needles without wrapping and found it was hard to cinch them against the base while keeping the binder tight at he same time.. So, I measured the distance around the base, then wrapped a length of needles with artificial sinew to match the measurement before I started attaching them to the base. I used waxed linen as the binder for the rest of the basket. It attaches itself to the artificial sinew nicely to hold the coil in place as I stitched around the base. I find it so much easier than trying to keep the bundle and binder tight as I add needles. When the bundle is wrapped, it seems to bend easier to match whatever form I'm using for the base. There are a few little gaps in this one, but not too noticeable. I tried several techniques to cover the holes, but each one seemed to take away from the clay leaf pattern and so decided to leave the holes to show.

Posting pictures/notes whenever or even if you choose or not, is fine with me. Would be curious to know if others wrap or not-wrap their first row or get tips on how they cinch the bundle against the base without wrapping. Maybe I'm the only one who has problems with that.

Once again, many thanks

susan

Thanks to you, Susan. I love the basket! Did you notice the little feet? They are a wonderful touch!

For pottery bases, some with coordinating beads, please see my etsy shop MakeABasket.


to find more baskets made with these pottery bases, click on the label pottery base below
Pamela

16. Three Considerations for Faster, Easier Coiling Post 16

Well, we have taken a little break from our series, Three Considerations for Faster, Easier Coiling, for a glimpse at the NCBA Convention, but now return...

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post, which was about using bases to start. I agree with Tony, Annejala, and Donna, i much prefer starting a basket "from nothing," that is, making a button. But i have found the challenge of the beginning more than many students can tackle. I don't know why coiling is perceived by some as difficult, but it is. But I also agree with Deb that using basket starts not only can make it easier for students to learn, but also increases the creative options for basketmakers. It also makes it easier to teach children.

Recommended starts for speed and ease of handling:

* drilled wooded pieces, regardless of their shape. They should be flat and pre-drilled

* pottery with holes around (properly fired polymer clay is fine, too, but make sure it is really fired…usually longer than specified, and perhaps at a lower temperature. The little perforated edges tend to break off if you don’t fire it thoroughly enough)

* discarded cds…glue two together, shiny sides out, if you don’t like the design. (E6000 or similar glue, even hotglue will work. The cds only have to be held by the glue until the pine needles go around one time, after that, the stitching will hold them.) This can be decorated with sharpie marker, or left plain. Poke holes either with a hot ice pick or drill with a dremel.

* Some people love walnut or hickory nut slices. I find them just a little too small for beginner’s comfort, but they are lovely and easy to obtain

*decoupaged cardboard can also make lovely starts, and be fun to make

*Shrink plastic. Put the holes in BEFORE shrinking.

*gourd pieces

*traditional teneriffe shapes

There are really endless items that can be used for starts...all of the baskets in this post were made by beginners, at public events, using The People Basket system.

I would love to hear about your favorite basketry starts, please leave a positive comment here for everyone to read!

The next post begins our wrap-up.
Thanks