‘Eco craft’, in Japan, refers to a kind of recycled paper tape, which is like several strands of strong paper twine, bonded together into a flat ribbon with more paper. Strong and lightweight, it’s mostly used to make baskets and bags. Today, I’ll show you how to weave this small shallow basket.
You can get Japanese eco-craft tape at this rakuten shop, and from some sellers on Etsy. Alternatively, you could use the same technique to weave folded strips of kraft paper, or strips cut from milk cartons for a strong light basket, though the effect will not be the same. If using materials other than eco-craft tape, read ‘strands’ as ‘mm’ in the instructions below, so a strip 6 strands wide would be 6mm wide.
For this small basket you’ll need:
- Eco craft tape – main colour 1.5m, contast colour 35cm
- scissors
- paperclips or binder clips
If you have sharp nails, you can split the tape into the required number of strands by hand. Otherwise, use a knife or one blade of your scissors to help split the tape.
Cut your tape as follows:
- main colour, 8 strands wide, 8cm long, 4 pieces
- main colour, 6 strands wide, 18,5cm long, 5 pieces
- main colour, 6 strands wide, 17.5cm long, 5 pieces
- main colour, 6 strands wide, 35cm long, 1 piece
- contrast colour, 6 strands wide, 35cm long, 1 piece
- main colour, 2 strands wide, 197cm long, 2 pieces
- main colour, 8 strands wide, 35cm long, 1 piece.
To make the base, arrange all pieces 1 and 2, alternating between long and short, horizontally. Using paperclips or binder clips to hold the corners in place, weave all the number 3 pieces in vertically, as pictured.
Bend all the long ends of the base upward 90 degrees, and weave main colour strip 4 through them. Overlap the ends. Weave contrast colour strip 5 around, the opposite way to strip 4 (so it goes over where strip 4 goes under and vice versa), overlapping the ends.
you’ll weave the two number 6 pieces at the same time, but the opposite way – holding both, tak one strip over and one strip under each base strip as you work round. Try to keep one strip higher and one strip lower, without twisting. Alternatively, you could twist the strips over each other every time they cross a base strip, giving a different effect.
Finish with strip number 7 – tuck it inside all the base strips, then bend each base strip over it and tuck down into the weave on the inside of the basket. A narrow object to lift the weave a little will help you tuck the ends in easily – I used the end of a paperclip.
Finished!
