How to Make Your Own Pine Needle Basket

Make your own beautiful basket with one of the most abundant natural materials on the continent – pine needles

Below Susan Topham shows you how to make your own pine needle basket. It’s so simple a child could do it!

Materials:

Sinew
Pine needles (8 inches is ideal)
Needle-nose Pliers
Scissors
Tapestry needles
1.5 inch segment of a drinking straw
Paper towels

Instructions:

1. Soak pine needles in water overnight to make them flexible. Otherwise they’ll be brittle and break

2. Cut off caps, connecting pine needles on the ends

3. Cut two arm span’s (fingertip to finger tip) worth of sinew

4. Peel apart the sinew in half or in thirds, so it’s not so thick

5. Thread a tapestry needle with a piece of sinew

6. Fill the straw full of pine needles, even the ends and push them through so they stick out about a a couple of inches on one side

7. Use the end of the sinew to tie a square knot around the ends of the pine needles, about a half inch from the end of the needles.

8. Wrap the sinew around the pine needles until it covers about an inch. Slide the straw back and fold the wrapped part of the pine needles onto itself.

9. Stitch the folded inch together with your tapestry needle.

10. Wrap the needles around themselves again, stitching them together.

11. When you start to run out of pine needles, insert more through the straw, so they overlap a bit.

12. Keep coiling the needles around themselves, stitching them together about every quarter inch as you go.

13. When your coil base is as large as you like,

14. When your ready to make the sides, pull your pine needles up and switch to a half-hitch stitch at an angle. Keep coiling around until your basket is complete.

The basket takes several days to make. When you’re not working on it keep the loose needles and basket moist by keeping them wrapped in a damp paper towel and put them in the Ziplock bag. Don’t keep them wet for more than a week or two or they’ll mold.

For more designs like this check out the book Coiled Art with Pine Needles:

For more DIY ideas follow Justin and Shayla’s Rewilding Adventure on Facebook.