Back Weaving

Part of making a basket is being happy with your results. If you a re not, my teacher Verna always says “take it out”.  We call this back-weaving.  It’s an important part of making a basket. Time consuming, but in the end you are much happier with your basket.

I had told myself I was only going to work on my basket cap while in class with my teacher, so that if I was making a mistake, it would be caught early and minimize the back-weaving.  I ignored my own advice and since I wasn’t able to meet with Verna these past several weeks, I proceeded to work on my cap on my own. Mistake!  See picture below.

The problem was I had difficulty adding sticks to keep them evenly spaced and adding my design element with bear grass and woodwardia fern at the same time.  Looking closely you can see my count on the pattern is not consistent.  Had I continued,  I would have been very unhappy with the results.  So, I tore it out, back to three rows of bear grass, and decided to change my design. The next picture shows my accomplishment today using woodwardia and black fern. My next row will be black fern again, adding a stick every fourth stick to keep them evenly spaced. Then, on to a more intricate pattern.

Coming up in the Fall, we will be gathering our woodwardia fern and dyeing it.