DIY bread basket

Happy Thanksgiving! What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Our house owner held a huge Thanksgiving party (37 adults and 8 children). It was my first real Thanksgiving dinner. I contributed Tortellini salad, pumpkin brownies and a lot of dinner rolls. Total I made 6 recipes: 2 recipes sweet dinner rolls, 2 recipes herb dinner rolls, 1 recipe baguette and 1 recipe French bread dinner rolls.

Before I started making the breads, I realized one of the important thing: I don't have a big container for the breads! I already decided to make the breads in an interesting shapes. It would be a shame if I presented the breads in a cardboard box. A basket would make it looks very nice but I don't have one. So, I made this bread basket with my recently learnt paper weaving technique.

DIY bread basket

Frankly, I wasn't satisfied with the basket. Being the first basket I made from scratch including the handle (I used a cardboard bottom last time) and being the third basket I made, the result was not bad. In the process I also learnt couple more things about paper weaving. In the same time I improved my skill.

Close up pattern

First lesson: use a distinctive colour between different pattern to pop it. I used rope pattern for the first five row and last four row. In between I used cotton pattern with two tubes. However, it's not so obvious. If I used a more distinctive colour, the pattern might pop more.

Close up basket

Second lesson: use a longer pole! My poles ended up too short to make a nice edging. I could have just cut it but I didn't want to. So,I choose to bend it behind the neighbour pole and make a loop. I have couple super short poles in the end and some longer one. It was hard to make them looked alike with such a big differences in pole length. Next time I really must make sure that the poles are much longer than the wall height.

Finally, this is the basket looked like with the breads. Of course I lined something before I put the breads in. The butter from the bread and the ink in the newspaper paper might do something weird and we didn't want it.

The breads in the basket

It's a shame that I was in rush in making this basket. I was making it while baking the breads. Next time I made another basket, I will make sure to take the step by step picture to share.

Happy DIY-ing,

Sherls