Today in my Sewing 101 column at Design Sponge I’m showing how to make a sewn and woven basket made from… an old pile of packing paper!
Thanks to a couple of online purchases, I had this huge pile of packing paper hanging around in my craft room. The pieces were really nice and long, and they just seemed to have so much potential. I couldn’t bear to just stuff them in the recycling bin.
So I folded the paper into strips and adding top stitching along both edges to strengthen and stabilize the paper, and also to make it look pretty.
Then I wove a bunch of strips together…
…and made a pretty basket! I have to say, I’m kind of amazed that humble packing paper could be so transformed. I have this basket sitting on my dining table now (loaded up with that scrumptious MadelineTosh sock yarn and gorgeous needles by Indian Lake Artisans), and every time I walk by it I actually forget that it’s paper and momentarily think it’s suede, light-colored leather, upholstery webbing, or burlap. I actually had to laugh last night because my eyes kept playing tricks on me with this basket and making me do double-takes. Magic? Perhaps!
So head on over to Design Sponge for the full how-to and free pattern! And by the way, if you don’t have plain brown paper around, I think this method would work great with gift wrap or leftover wallpaper.
(PS: A quick shout-out to Indian Lake Artisans, the company that makes the knitting needles shown above. I happened to meet the company owners when I stopped by their booth at Vogue Knitting Live. It’s a small company run by a husband and wife team, and they’ve developed these fascinating hexagonal knitting needles. It’s a little hard to tell in the photo, but rather than being round like traditional needles, these are shaped like a hexagon! This shape is said to help keep stitches more uniform while also being easier on the hands. They’re made locally in Michigan from responsibly-harvested local wood, and each set is topped with a beautiful copper decorative shape. I just love a good sustainable-local-crafty-small-business story. Check ‘em out here!)
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Brett… I am so grieved that I threw away my last packing paper pile!!!!. Thanks for posting this great recycling project!
Will we ever see you on The Nate Berkus show?
This looks so cool! Love the yarn colors, too!
This is really cool but I don’t have any packing paper either, but instead of using paper & seeing the yarn in the basket why not crochet or knit long pieces of yarn any stitch you like even different colors use your scraps up and weave the yarn strips together. I don’t know if it’ll work but I’m going to give it a try. I’m tweeting your site so other people will see these cool uses of basically things we throw in the trash great idea.
I’ve just moved overseas and couldn’t bear to throw out all the packing paper from our shipment,.my DH didn’t understand that ‘it would come in useful one day’. I ironed some and stamped it to use for xmas wrapping paper and felt so virtuous & environmentally friendly!! now i can make multiple baskets :) thanks for sharing this great project.
I really LOVE LOVE LOVE this basket!!
I love this! I saw this on D*S, an hour later I realized I had been planning to recycle a ton of packing paper because we received some boxes at work, and started folding those big pieces of paper right then and there! (altho i probably shouldn’t have…) I folded up the strips around 7 times because they got a little twisty if they get too thick – Now I’m just waiting until we can unpack the rest of the boxes at work… :D
This is absolutely brilliant and I’m bemoaning the stacks of packing paper I’ve recycled! Thank you for playing on our behalf.
how long were your strips? I have a bunch I ironed out last night and Im just not sure how long they should be or how many? Some of my pieces are pretty wide so i could get a couple strips out of each piece but I don’t want to cut them up until Im more sure of the strip length…THANKS! :-) this is a great idea…now what to do with the mountain of packing peanuts???
hi Amanda – you really can make the strips any length or width you want, depending on how big you want your basket to be. Just figure out what size basket you want and make sure the strips are long enough to equal the basket base’s width plus the height of two sides plus a few extra inches to fold and tuck in the raw ends. My strips were about 30″ long and about 1 1/2″ wide. But really you can do any size you want! Good luck!
thanks! once I went back and looked i was able to (der) count the number of weaves you made and fig use out how many strips to use. I have been dying for a way to display my yarns and i think this will do nicely. Im so anxious to do this…will try to leave a photo when I get it done. ps- browsing your older posts and now I think I might try the crochet rings tonight too…my husband calls me an old lady but i <3 them…what GREAT gifts they will make!!!