Your Cart is Empty
DELIVERY$12 in AUST up to 1kg | Click & Collect from Box Hill Nth, Melbourne, Australia
DELIVERY$12 in AUST up to 1kg | Click & Collect from Box Hill Nth, Melbourne, Australia
Hi, I’m Annie...I'm passionate about basket weaving and basket making with raffia and I work here at The Raffia Connection. If you subscribe to our newsletter, you probably know me best through the weird and wonderful limited edition raffia mixes and special dyes that I dream up every couple of months. If you’ve ever placed an order with us, I was probably the one who packed and mailed your goodies to you.
As we move out of winter here in Australia - after the icy Melbourne mornings and grey afternoons - I want to share a project I undertook a couple of summer's ago that I’ve called “The Summer of Little Things".
Before this project, I’d spent months making a set of six bright pink placemats as a gift for a family member. They turned out beautifully, but each one took about 20 hours to complete. By the end, I was desperate for variety in my evening crafting.
So, I decided to spend six weeks of summer making smaller and quicker basket making projects with interesting shapes using a mixture of basketry stitches I already knew. These tiny projects only took 2-3 hours each and gave me the joy of basket weaving and completing something in a single sitting.
Looking back at the thirty-five or so items I made, I realised I learned a lot as well as finding epic satisfaction in the process. Here are some of the key lessons I discovered.
When weaving small baskets, I became much more experimental. I wasn’t afraid to try new things, because if it didn’t work out, I’d only invested a couple of hours.
Some items I even threw away - but I never saw them as a waste of time - instead, they showed me which shapes or stitches didn’t work together. That knowledge has been invaluable.
‘Wispy bits’ (the fine, stringy raffia left over after using the juicier strands in a bundle) make the cutest little baskets and are ideal for small and larger basket weaving too, but there’s something so sweet about tiny wispy creations.
I also experimented with making different types of handles. They can be tricky, so I recommend practising on smaller baskets before moving on to larger ones. If you really want to level up your basket making skills, a fantastic resource is the Raffia Bottle Kit & Online Course 2 by Craft School Oz, which covers handles and glass bottle wrapping for basket weaving.
During dyeing, some raffia absorbs colour unevenly. These strands - known as ‘dappled raffia’ - were usually discarded during production. I decided to experiment with them and discovered how beautiful they looked, especially in simple, single-coloured baskets.
Now, I love using dappled raffia for both small and larger projects, and it’s become one of my favourite discoveries from this journey.
Using fine strands elevate your basket weaving technique - or any basket making project - by allowing for crisp, delicate patterning. I have found that thicker strands make my basket making patterns look clumsy, while finer strands created delicate, more defined designs.
Another experiment was coiling raffia - a fabulous basket making technique - around tiny op-shop vases and shot glasses. Until then, I’d only used spiral stitch over glass, but I found that both the Navajo (Figure of 8) stitch and blanket stitch also look beautiful and are surprisingly easy to do.
One of my biggest lessons was to keep going, even when a basket felt wonky or imperfect. In the past, I sometimes abandoned projects if I wasn’t happy halfway through.
With these small baskets, I pushed through and often ended up loving the finished piece. Even the imperfect ones looked charming, especially when grouped together.
Before this project, I assumed small baskets weren’t very useful. But grouped together on a shelf, I now see how effective small basket weaving pieces or decorative basket making creations can be as charming home décor and they can make just as much impact as a single large basket. I ended up arranging collections of tiny baskets on display shelves, and they’ve become striking pieces in my home.
Perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that not every project needs to be practical. I’d always made gifts or useful items, but my summer of little things showed me the joy of creating simply because it makes me happy.
Looking at my growing collection of tiny baskets brought me so much delight - and that was reason enough.
There are many more observations I could share, but I’ll stop here for now.
If you’d like to chat more about basket making, basket weaving, raffia coiling or have questions about anything I’ve mentioned, I’d love to hear from you! You can find me on Instagram at @annie0009 or @theraffiaconnection.
If you have any other raffia related tips or tricks that you’d like to share with us, we’d love to hear from you at info@theraffiaconnection.com.au
