She Found the MacKinzie-Childs Catalog....

Tessie came in last night when I was cleaning out old catalogs and magazines. It is my practice to go through them and cut and file the things that I like to cut down on piles. She surreptitiously grabbed one of the MacKinzie-Childs catalogs http://www.mackenzie-childs.com/default.aspx?crcat=brand~brands&crsource=adwords&crkw=mackenzie%20-%20childs&crcampaign=6331117588&gclid=CMeTxN6ln6kCFQUDbAodQmv4ug and disappeared.

When she came back, the thing had post it notes sticking out between almost every page.

She picked a basket as my first task. It looked easy enough, so this morning I went to work.

The bottom of the basket is solid. I chose to use a Woodsie for a base. I drilled holes about every 3/32" all around. Then I glued a piece out of the catalog to that. It was off of a matching cake safe on the same page. You don't want to glue the page first. It will tear when you try to drill through it.

It is actually a lot less time consuming to do baskets this way. I didn't have to coil the whole bottom and then start up the sides.

As you can see, I started by wrapping a bit of the wire at the start and then used the holes in the base exactly like I would if I were working with a woven base.

I did the "wrap four and then through the previous row" technique. The original was done with wrap one, previous row one. For a first try, I didn't want to waste the time that it would take to do that. If it works, I will do it again with that technique.

If you want to try baskets, I have a lot of tutorials under "baskets" in the labels on the sidebar. The coil technique starts here. http://caseymini.blogspot.com/2008/11/tisket-tasket.html

Anyway, I did six rows and fastened it off.

Here in the second photo you can see the one that I did and the one that MacKinzie-Childs did. You can also see the hole to the far right where I sacrificed the cake safe for the bottom.

Tessie hinted that she would like more, done in this way. She held the basket up and then proceeded to tell me, "You know, there are a lot more photos in that catalog that would make great bottoms for baskets...."

She is now happily at work destroying catalogs and magazines, right and left. She has a pile of torn pages about six inches high.....and she is still tearing!

I will be making baskets for the next century, if she has anything to say about it. I had better get started! This is one of my originals. Please give credit where credit is due if you copy. Thanks.

See you tomorrow.