Make a Pine Needle Basket

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CRAFTS

Coil needles from the forest floor to create a Native American art form.

Patience and pine needles are the main ingredients for this natural and versatile basket. Add handles and slices of black walnut for the center, and you have a basket made from Mother Earth's bounty that will last for generations to come. Pine needle basketry, conceived by Native Americans in Pre-Columbian times, is now a viable part of our American cultural heritage. Employing ancient coiling techniques and long-leaf pine needles, this art form has remained virtually the same for thousands of years. Yet it has evolved into the 21st century, bringing with its connections to our past a contemporary need to preserve our natural resources and appreciate our planet's gifts to mankind. What better way to keep tuned to Mother Nature, than to gather fragrant pine needles from her forest floor and sew them into baskets of such natural beauty, purity, and resilience.

The basket shown has 10 coils in the bottom and six coils in the side walls.

A WORD ABOUT PINE NEEDLES

All pine needles are not created equal! Needles from the long-leaf pine tree are almost always used in basket making. The average length of the long leaf needles is 6"-15". The short-leaf pines produce a needle that may be up to 6" long, but these needles are quite skinny. However, if this is what you have available in your "backyard," you may use them; it will only take more time and patience.

PREPARING THE NEEDLES

Place pine needles in an old baking pan, one long enough to accommodate the length of the needles. Cover with boiling water, and allow to soak for 30 minutes. Pour off water and wrap needles in a towel.

The next step is to remove the caps from the pine needles. Do this by pulling them off with your fingers, or scraping the shaft of each needle with the dull edge of your scissors or butter knife. Try to leave each needle intact, as a whole needle will fill the gauge faster.

Begin with three whole pine needles, tie on 1 1/2 yards of thread, just under the caps of needles. Use a double-overhand knot. (This is simply a "tie your shoe" knot, except you loop the thread on the right through twice). Trim off short thread and caps of pine needles as close to knot as possible.

Place pine-needle bundle on top edge of nut, always keeping loose needles to the left. At this point, you will be wrapping the thread around the pine needles and nuts, so you must keep the thread taut at all times. A clothes pin will help you hold the thread tight as you go around the nut. Once you've made the first row around the nut, you will be stitching the next row of needles to this first row so the thread will hold itself. Be patient, the first coil is the hardest part; it gets easier as you progress with your basket. (SEE DIAGRAM 1)

Check the holes in the nut slice with the sewing needle. If the holes are too small for the needle to pass through, and you don't have a small drill bit to make the hole larger, simply move the pine-needle bundle over to the first large hole to begin. Insert the threaded sewing needle from the back of the work, coming out the front side of the work. Overlap both the pine-needle bundle and nut with thread. Continue to the next small hole and then to the larger chambers of the nut. Keeping your stitches 1/4" apart, place three or four stitches in each of the large holes in the nut. As you come back to the beginning, hide the knot by separating the bundle of needles and tucking the knot into the middle coil. Take one or two additional stitches, following the now established stitching pattern. Insert sewing needle, again from back to front, close to the previous stitch, at the top of underneath coil, catching a few of the pine needles in bottom coil. Rotate your work toward your body so you can see where you're stitching. Go in on the right side of previous stitch (from the back) and come out on the left side of same stitch on the front of work. This will make a straight stitching pattern on the inside of the basket.