Easter basket

Miss E and I were brainstorming ideas for some Easter craft today. She came up with this idea because she has a lovely easter basket but we didn't have one for A and she was very concerned about where the easter bunny would put his eggs. Anyway, we had a lot of fun putting this together and are thrilled with the finished item. We had already done similar weaving on a tiny scale so I just had to modify it for a larger project by adding the card base.

Here is the tutorial.

Firstly, cut a circle of paper from a paper plate or stiff card and put an odd number of dots around the perimeter (it is important that it is an odd number otherwise the weaving won't work).

Next, I just used the pointy end of the scissors to make a little hole where each pencilled dot is.

Then softly fold your chenille stems (or pipecleaners as they are also known) in half and push each end up through 2 holes. Now, obviously there is an odd number of dots so you will need to put one chenille stem through halfway and secure it to the underside loop of the chenille stem next door, so to speak. Once you have wound it around or pinched it to secure you can trim the excess off.

Now, you just bend one end of a chenille stem around any of the uprights and start weaving. Miss E is nearly 7 and she had no problems with the weaving - it is nice and simple. Just keep adding chenille stems by twisting their ends together as you run out.

Once you get to a little bit less than an inch from the top you can secure the last weaving chenille stem around one of the uprights and then bend over all of the uprights to secure the top of the basket. Now, half of the uprights will have their horizontal chenille stem on the inside so you can just simply fold the upright over and pinch. The other half will have their horizontal chenille stem on the outside so I just folded the upright the other way and then pushed it through to the inside for a neat finish. The idea is to make sure the last horizontal chenille stem is secured with every upright one.

You could leave it without a handle but we also added a handle simply by winding two stems together to get a good length and then poking it through on either side and winding it back around itself to secure. I also made a little chenille bunny outline and popped that on the front so we know it is for easter. Miss E had creative control over the colours so they are not necessarily the 'spring'iest' of colour combinations but I think it looks great anyway.