Campi Basket

I won’t go into all the detail of making my basket, as I (mostly) used the tutorial found here.

The biggest difference is 1, my basket is square, and 2, my basket is much, much larger, as seen in the Campi scene.

I used a cardboard form made out of a cut-up toothpaste box, taped and covered in tinfoil.

Some other deviations from the original tutorial: 
I didn’t use crochet thread, I used a 2-ply embroidery floss (as all my crochet thread I had on hand is the 3-4 ply kind).  This ended up as a happy accident, as my floss was an orange variegated floss, and I watered down the tan paint, there is a slight variation of color to the basket that is quite pretty, and doesn’t show up very well in the photograph.

I also didn’t drill tiny holes in the sides of my base, as I didn’t have any drill bits anywhere near small enough.  I know what she meant about the mat board ‘splitting’ when pushing the wire inside, but that was dealt with fairly easily by letting the glue dry under some weights.  (I need to work on my patience….I kept messing with it before the glue was completely dry, making the whole process much harder on myself than it ought to have been!)

I also didn’t do the ‘braided’ top or the handle.  To finish off the basket, I cut off the spokes just long enough to fold over and go back in the adjoining weave.  (If that makes any sense…..the method is particularly noticeable in the front edge of the front basket)

Anyway, without further ado, here is the first basket!

I thoroughly intend to stuff the bottom with foam or some sort of filler….there is no way I’m making that many peas to fill it up!

 

 

Also, note to self:  just because it’s tiny, doesn’t mean it doesn’t take just as long as it does to make it full size!  I severely underestimated the time it would take to complete this little project!