Making a Ceremonial Basket Cap: July 2013

The weaving is done, and now it’s time to clip off the sticks, clean the inside of the cap, and do the final shaping. This was the scariest part for me, as I hoped my cap would not fall apart. My mentor, Verna, told me if my weaving is tight enough, it shouldn’t.

Initially I decided to cut the warp sticks just to 1/8 inch below the last row of weaving. Then do the final clipping after shaping the cap. To shape the cap, I soaked it and filled a zip-lock baggie with wet sand inside of the cap. I let it sit and dry for a couple days and then cleaned the inside with small clippers and scraped it with a knife. I’m told in the old days they used a shell to clean the inside of their baskets. Finally, I clipped the warp sticks right close to the last row of weaving.

When I first cut the sticks to the 1/8 inch length, I was totally surprised (and undone!) to find my cap was too small to fit on my head. All along I thought it was probably going to be too big for me. But instead, I had made a child’s cap?! I laughed, but felt disappointed I’d never be able to put this cap on my head. I tried not to panic, but thought, OK, there is still a lot of cleaning of the inside of the basket to be done which is taking up space, plus the 1/8^th inch of sticks which is not allowing the cap to set down fully on my head. I continued on with cleanup process, soaked the rim of the hat one last time and then tried it on. Almost magically, and to my great relief, the cap fits my head perfectly!

The pictures that follow show the completion process and my finished cap.