Weaving Guide

Foraging For Materials

Generally, any part of a tree that can be wrapped around your wrist can be used to make a Stake-and-Strand basket, which is the type I generally make. Normally, this is the most recent year’s growth, which tends to be the most flexible part of the tree. For Basketry we want long, skinny rods to weave with, so the longer and skinnier the most recent year’s growth on a tree is, the more useful it is. Willow is generally best for this, but other woods like Hazel, Beech, Snowberry, Dogwood, Blackthorn, Ivy, Ash, Alder and Lime can be useful, too. Look out for hedgerows in particular, as these tend to be cut back every year, boosting the production of long thin rods – they are also easier to collect from than great big trees! Fallen branches/trunks of trees tend to send up lots of long skinny shoots, too.

NB. Basketry materials are best cut over winter when the sap is down, normally November-March or so, depending on the weather. You can cut outwith this period, but the quality of weaver isn’t as good, and they aren’t as long either.

A great resource here is Susie Vaughan’s Handmade Baskets

What is basketry willow?

Just as fruit and veg have been cultivated by mankind from an ancient wild ancestor, so too basketry willows have been selectively cultivated/bred. Whereas veg was bred for flavour, yield etc, willow was bred for weaving characteristics such as flexibility, length, stoutness or thinness, colour etc. For this reason, basketry willows tend to be a far superior materials to work with than foraged ones (this does not mean there isn’t a lot to be gained by foraging – not least a sense of connection with wild spaces and plants).

You can buy basketry willow from companies such as Musgroves, Somerset Willow and Coates in England, or Barfad Willow in Scotland, or grow your own

Categories of basketry willow

Drying/Weaving Fresh/Categories of Willow

Basketry Materials are generally referred to as Green, Semi-Green, Brown and stripped.

  • Green means freshly cut, thus still flexible and not requiring soaking before working with. However, much of the volume of the willow will be water, so they’ll shrink as they dry out, resulting in a loose basket if you weave with them. So, it’s best to leave green rods standing up in a dry area until you can see wee wrinkles appearing (Semi-green), then weave with them. This is always something of a gamble, as they might still shrink more after you’ve woven them.
  • Brown means the material has been completely dried out, and is past the stage of looking just a wee bit wrinkly; it now has no water content. This can take up to 10 months. This means it will need to be soaked (a day or more per foot long that they are) to be pliable.

Stripped Willow: Buff willow is willow that is boiled then stripped of its bark. White willowis stripped willow (without the boiling). These stripped willows only require about half an hour of soaking for every foot long that they are (approx).

A frog in the soaking tank!

Soaking and mellowing

Soaking means to submerge the material entirely in water until the thick end is flexible enough to bend at 90 degrees without the bark splitting, and/or doesn’t kink when you try to gently bend the thick end into a ‘U’ shape. The general baseline is that materials need to be soaked at least one day for every foot long that they are. So, a 5 ft rod would require 5 days soaking. However, this is just a guideline, and will vary a fair bit depending on the variety of material and temperature of the water (colder water, slower soaking). For example, I’ve found that in winter, 6ft long rods can take up to 2 months to soak.

The key here is to be patient! There is no point in rushing, or pretending materials are soaked enough, it will just make the weaving process much more difficult than it needs to be, leading to frustration and a lack of enjoyment.

Mellowing After soaking, it is best to then let the willow dry to the touch, then wrap it in a damp sheet and leave it standing up somewhere cool and dry for at least 12 hours (ideally 24-48) to allow the water to really soak into the inside of the willow. This is known as mellowing, and makes a huge difference to the workability of the willow - making it more flexible and making the bark less likely to shed. After mellowing, the material should be kept wrapped in the sheet somewhere cool and dry, and can be woven within 3-5 days during the summer, or up to 3 weeks during a winter cold spell.

To speed things up, soak materials in a hot bath (this will still take days). Or, when materials are already 75% soaked, wrap them in tarpaulin and steam them until pliable (check the willow every 30 minutes when steaming)

Grading

It is best to grade your material according to length (e.g. make stacks of 3ft long, 4ft, 5ft etc) and, ideally, thickness too. This is partly to make it easier to find the willow you need when preparing to weave a basket, but it also makes soaking easier as soaking time is proportional to the thickness and length of the material.

I would also recommend keeping the species you forage in separate bundles, e.g. 3ft Blackthorn, 3ft Goat willow, 3ft Rusty willow etc, as different species will have different soaking times and weaving characteristics.

To make a basket you’ll need a variety of lengths of your material. Some thicker pieces for the slath/base sticks, slightly thinner for uprights, and thinner again for your weavers. So, for example, you could buy or forage a stack of 6ft, 5ft and 4ft rods, but just 4ft wouldn’t get you very far.

For smaller crafts projects generally you only need a couple of lengths, eg 3-4ft and 4-5ft.

Growing willow

If you want to really get into weaving then I highly recommend growing your own materials – it lowers the cost, heightens your relationship with the materials, and makes the experience of weaving a basket feel more complete.

You can either plant short ‘pegs’ of about 30cm long,which then get cut down to the ground every year (coppiced), or plant longer whips, which would then pollarded, i.e. get trimmed off higher up (e.g. at hip or shoulder height each year). It depends what works best for your body, and whether you want to dodge dear nibbling!

I’d recommend buying/sourcing basketry willow pegs/cuttings from Barfad Willow or Deeside Willow, as they’re growing in Scotland and what they sell is tried and tested in our climate.

Planting: generally, the advice is to plant with ~1ft (30cm) between cuttings in all directions. You can simply plant a large block, or leave paths between rows. There isn’t a right or wrong, it’s more about finding a system that works for your space. 

Hanna Van Aelst has a great youtube playlist of videos on all of this.

Resources

In terms of learning weaving techniques, I would highly recommend the following resources:

  • Hanna van Aelst’s YouTube channel is great, she has videos of basketry techniques.
  • Jonathan Ridgeon, ‘Willow basketry, a how to guide.’ Good beginners projects moving into intermediate level. Round and square baskets. Clear photo instructions.
  • Susie Vaughan, ‘Homemade baskets from nature’s colourful materials.’ This is especially good in terms of advice on foraging. Also has very good instructional diagrams. Round and oval baskets.
  • Jenny Crisp, ‘Willow.’ Some nice projects, from very small and simple to larger pieces. Bigger projects use catalan methods rather than the broad continental ones we used in the workshop I taught. Round, oval, square baskets, trays, spiral weave, plant supports. Some of the instructions are a little tricky to follow, though.

Other resources (more intermediate level, instructions can be tricky to decipher without a bit of experience/knowhow):

Sue Gabriel, Sally Goymer, ‘the complete book of basketry techniques.’ Definitely intermediate level, interesting and inspiring but not always easy to follow