17th c Beaded Basket~ Wrapping the Frame

My kind of 'Getting Dirty'

   I had a clear picture of my basket in my mind's eye~ but just could not find the right shade of silk to wrap my frame with~ and heck, even if I could, have you priced hand dyed silk ribbon???? Good grief!  6 and 7 dollars a yard and UP!!!  utterly ridiculous~ I bought a spool of undyed bias cut silk ribbon from Dharma Trading in Washington~ fabulous place she has~ the spool of ribbon I am holding I bought for 8.00....well, I think perhaps it was 8.70 ~ and how many yards you ask????  62!  YES~ sixty two yards!!  (yes, of coarse I counted) I bought two just to be sure I had enough~ especially when you are hand dying, you simply MUST do all needed for a project, and a little extra, because even if you write down your recipe to a T....you will never get the same color twice!

   So into my little bucket the silk went, carefully unrolled.  I used Procion dyes~ also carried by Dharma~ a little tan...a little ecru.... a little golden brown for earthiness

  Swishing every few hours carefully, so not to make a huge knott......  this was after about 3 hours and was as much dye as the fibers of the silk would hold, so a little rinse and as it came out, instead of waiting for it to dry, I cheated a little and ironed it to dry it~what can I say I get a little impatient sometimes!

   After I got it all ironed, which took longer than dying it altogether I think....I held up a little sample of lattice to see how it looked~ good enough!

  To make wrapping a bit easier, I wound one roll of the silk into a tight wad that I could hold in my hand and pass thru the spokes of the basket easily as I wound it round.  I tacked the end with a couple of stitches in matching thread and decided to do the spokes first. You will note that the very top edge is left bare~ this edge will be spiral wrapped~ no 'dirt' there!

  So here you can see my little stitches~ wrapping first with the wool gave the silk something to grab onto, and also made it much easier to pass my needle thru.  I wound round and round and round again, until all was covered

 At this point I started to freak out a little, as alone, like this, the silk really looked orange to me~ not brown anymore at all. If I remember right, I lamented for about 3 days, going from ' it looks OK'....to 'nope~ its getting ripped off and I will re~dye another batch'... and back again.  I was thinking too much of coarse, and finally just listened to the little voice in my head saying, 'no~ leave it well alone, all will be as it should'.

  Finally~ let the 'bead stabbing' commence!