Coiling

We signed up to a streaming service recently, which has given me a rich vein of art and handcraft reality tv programming to binge. I’m not normally a fan of reality tv, but I love the Great British Bake Off, the Great British Sewing Bee, Good with Wood and Portrait/Landscape Artist of the Year. It turns out there is another show in the same vein: the Great British Pottery Throwdown.

I learned pottery between ages 6 and 12, then later it was included as part of my secondary education when I was 16-17. The last time I did any was in my 20s, when I did a terracotta sculpture short course. I had an idea that I would do it once every decade of my life, but my 30s and 40s passed by without me getting my hands covered in clay, and it’s doubtful my back would cope with it now.

So when the show gave me an itch to play with clay, I turned instead to coiled basketry.

This has many advantages. It’s entirely made from recycled materials – strips from old denim jeans leftover from weaving rugs and cotton thrums. It’s portable – I’ve been doing it while visiting Mum in aged care. There’s no need to find a kiln for hire. The materials produce only a little dust and don’t require safety equipment. You can take your time and it doesn’t dry out. And if you drop the object you’re making, it doesn’t shatter.

I had no idea what I was making when I started; I just coiled and sewed until I ran out of denim strip and found I had a little basket. Then I started another. That became a lid.

I’ve started another piece. This time with black denim and blue thread. So far I have a growing disc. I’m thinking maybe it’ll become a trivet or a wide bowl, but in truth I’m happy to let it become whatever the moment leads it to become.

Sticks & Leaves

A few months back the teacher of the basket-making course I did at the start of the year posted on Facebook that she was clearing her excess accumulation of weaving materials, so I got in contact to arrange to collect some. What I took made barely a dint in her collection, but I kept in mind that I have only a small space in the garage to store it. I’m glad I did. They take up a fair bit of space there.

I also discovered a few months back that there are a couple of willow trees down by the nearby creek, so when we go walking down there I grab a couple of the whiplike slim branches, coil them up and take them home. I’ve also bought some old rope and put aside a branch that could make a nice handle.

But I haven’t done any basket weaving since I used up the cordyline from the workshop. Having to pre-soak the materials is part of the problem. I know I can only work for half an hour a day, so I can only soak a bit at a time, and it turns out I’m not so good at that sort of pre-planning. The other is that some of the baskets I want to try, like a tension basket, need firmer materials than leaves for the basic framework, and as time goes by I’m forgetting why I got excited about this craft in the first place.

Mosaic making had kind of taken over, too. I’m much more excited about it, and have several projects in various stages. Getting information about it is much easier, and I have two friends and a couple of women at my art classes who also do it.

So now I have a bunch of basket weaving materials I suspect I may not use. Oh well. You’ve got to give these things a try, right?