Winter Workshops

 

Despite the cold weather winter is ideal for garden basketry workshops. There is plenty of useful materials and apart from building outdoor structures you can use your creativity indoors.

Weaving Magic series of 3 workshops over consecutive Sundays saw the participants acquire a variety of new skills. Starting with string or 2ply.After a short while many lengths of string was produced.

Next challenge was tension trays 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then outdoors  for fence and some random weaving.

  

 

Next challenge was a rib basket 

At times it was very quite as they all concentrated. Despite my advice of making a SMALL rib basket only one student completed her basket as the rest managed larger baskets and hopefully they will compete them soon and send me the photos.

All  in all the workshops where a successful foray into sharing my skills.

Garden Basketry on ABC TV

Winter is a great time of the year to add a bit of creative basketry to your garden. On Saturday July 5th at 6.30pm there will be a segment on Gardening Australia relating to garden basketry featuring  Nirvana Farm and some of Deb’s creations.

 

Materials, Tension trays,fences and more……..and for those in the Adelaide Hills check out the Winter edition of the Adelaide Hills Magazine for more basketry stories.

Basketry in the Garden

  

Gardens are great places to construct large projects.      

 

 

Using Tension Trays in the garden

 

 

 

Trellises in the vegetable garden made using knotless netting technique.

 

Prunings wrapped with florist tape and solar lights.

 

More uses for Tension Trays

Tension trays are so called as the round material, when put together place stress on one an other holding the tray together.They can be made any size and from any materials  forming a variety of uses.

To make in its simplest form an outside frame is formed by bending a piece into a circle. You can go aroundd a few time to make a strong frame.

Cut out 2 cross members  so they overlap. You can tie the ends to the circle. This is necessary on large outside trays. for these I use wire.

   Fill in the tray with weavers so they overlap the circle starting with the 2 centre pieces . Continue working away from the centre towards the outer frame equally until the circle is filled in and ridged.Trim to the desired shape around the circle. If you are using fresh materials you will have to put a couple of extra lengths aside and add them in when the others dry out and shrink.

Now the basic concept can to taken to the garden to create screens and fences. When making screens and fences I use fresh materials.

A fence can be made up of several ‘trays’.For low garden fences I make them up first then put them in place.

A longer stronger cross member is secured in place with wire.Put a point on the end to put it in the ground.Fill in until ridged and  trim. When you have the desired number of trays make pilot hole in the soil then gently tap the tray into position.

 

 

 

This fence is a attempt to limit the damage my chooks are doing to this new garden which slopes down so the soil is pushed down the hill and over the top of new plants.

 

lets hope it works!

 

 

 

 

To make larger fences or screens start by putting suitable posts in the ground.In this area one lower screen is made of willow in the usual way. The larger open screen has 3 cross members. It is made of bamboo and poles are placed on an angle .It has been up for 6 months and has held together despite being  very open with few weavers.

This method is very simple, effective,  versatile  and fun to play with . Like other forms of contemporary basketry the method is only limited by your imagination- there are no rules!